Secret Sin In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

Nathaniel Hawthorne is possibly one of the greatest authors of all time. Hawthorne was born and worked in the nineteenth century. He had a large collection of literature that ranged from children’s stories, nonfiction sketches, a presidential campaign biography of Franklin, essays, and four major novels (Alexander 3). This large background of different types of literature helped him become the Hawthorne that people know today. Hawthorne believed that sin and evil are present in people, that original sin visited us and that when deeply thinking the mind is not free from any thought (Alexander 3). These beliefs are visible in many of his works such as “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Minister’s Black Veil”. Nathaniel Hawthorne supports the allegory that all humans have secret sin, as shown in “The Minister’s Black Veil”. In the short story “Young Goodman Brown”, an allegory is displayed when Goodman Brown finds the people of his village having a devil meeting in the forest. The short story of “Young Goodman Brown” displays the allegory that people all have some secret sin and are not entirely good. One of the first characters that the reader is introduced to is the devil who later says “‘Evil is nature of mankind”. …show more content…
Hawthorne supports the allegory that all humans have secret sin in “The Minister’s Black Veil”. In the story “Young Goodman Brown”, the allegory that everyone has secret sin and is a mix of good and evil is displayed when Brown finds the people of his village having a devil meeting in the forest. The two stories both address the allegory in different ways, in “The Minister’s Black Veil”, the allegory is displayed by a black veil that Mr. Hooper wears over his face to hide and acknowledge his sin, and in “Young Goodman Brown”, it is displayed in the people of the town who Brown thought were entirely good, going to a devil meeting. The allegory that all humans have some secret hidden sin is true in the world that we live in