Young Goodman Brown: Dream vs. Reality

 Nathaniel Hawthorne's stories "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Birthmark" both make use of dreams to affect the story and reveal the central characters. With each story, the dreams presented are extremely beneficial to the development of the story as they give the reader a new view of the plot itself, or the characters within. At the same time, however, it becomes difficult to determine how much of the dream has been affected by the character, and how much is pure fantasy. This is true with Young Goodman Brown, who cannot determine whether the events in his life actually occurred, or if they simply were created in his troubled mind while he slept. Dreams thusly play an important developmental role in the explication of Hawthorne's characters.

    Young Goodman Brown's dream near the end of his story has a most profound effect on his character. After a night of making deals with the Devil, having all of his fellow countrymen show their Satanic sympathies and himself becoming affiliated with the Fallen Angel, Brown understandably looks to account these incredible events to a dream state. However, Brown acts coldly towards Faith after that particular night, and completely changes his demeaner as he begins to question whether the dream was, in fact, a dream, or reality. What may have been but a dream turns out to haunt Brown for the rest of his life, as he can no longer accept the people in his life for what they appear to be, and can not forget that he saw them all at the witch-meeting. In contrast, is the debatable question of whether or not the dream was only a "wild dream" (Hawthorne, 318). If Young Goodman Brown indeed did dream of the witch-meeting, then he has wasted his life with his unrestrained, unrelenting paranoia. Because of the ambiguity of the situation, where neither the reader, narrator nor protagonist can be sure of the validity of the dream's depictions of the residents of Salem, Hawthorne makes it difficult of analyze Brown's character. It it therefore impossible to come to any absolute conclusions regarding the nature of Young Goodman Brown as one cannot accurately assess what has happened to him, and the consequences of those events.

       Hawthorne is able to change our views on his characters with the simple use of dreams. Dreams prove to be an effective plot device in both "The Birthmark" and "Young Goodman Brown" as they provide an air of uncertainty to the character that they are associated with. The troubled Young Goodman Brown can not determine whether or not the incredible visions of the previous night were real. As a precaution, he avoids contact with the dream-related people and lives the remainder of his life alone, but surrounded by those who were once his friends, associates, and family. As evidenced by these two short stories, we can see the important role that dreams can play in the effective telling of a tale.

Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting? (387)" The story "Young Goodman Brown" is portrayed as a straight forward tale of a man on a venture. It is not overly difficult to comprehend or interpret, however it does have several great ambiguities. As Hawthorne's tale has a great deal of symbolism, it is all in retrospect to the ambiguous entities within the tale. The formalistic approach will be used to analyze the ambiguities in the story, mainly focusing upon the use of dark and light contrasts. The questions of why did Goodman Brown leave his wife Faith and venture into the forest and was his journey into the forest a reality or a dream bring a grand weight of ambiguity upon the shoulders of this tale.

Throughout the story we are left with no answer to whether this was a real experience or just a dream. It had real elements to assume it was real, the forest, all the people he had met there, also what happened in the forest seemed real. On the other hand the appearance of the devil is suggesting this is a dream, because there is no real evidence to back this up.

Even though we cannot interpret whether it was a dream or not, Hawthorne uses this to ridicule Puritan belief, by pointing out that maybe the conversion experience Brown and the Puritans had was a simple realization of truth, not “the” epiphany they were searching for. Also on a psychological level this would prove to be a dream because it may had been Brown’s subconscious creating a dream. He was wondering what truth is and perhaps he got the answer through the dream by figuring out this on his own, because he knew the answer in his heart, and he just needed a sort of justified mean to get this epiphany.

Hawthorne did not put too much importance or gave any hints to point either way, because it did not really matter if it was real or not, to Brown it was a real experience nevertheless. This just shows that a decisive battle be it religious nature or something else, can be fought not just physically but mentally also, and it shows that it is hard to accept something new and something unknown into your heart if it has been closed by some beliefs.

In order for Brown to explore himself, to journey into his own heart this must had been a dream, because Puritan belief required it’s believers to blindly follow, and seeing as Brown was a believer he had to make real scenario for his adventure without breaking any rules or disobeying religion. And because Brown was doubtful he could not share what he has found out nor was he allowed, so he chose the bitter end of gaining knowledge which is to take it to the grave with him.

Regardless of this short story being a dream or not, Hawthorne tried to point out the wrong sides of zealousness and fanatical belief. Brown was only one of the many people who paid a hefty price for blindly following faith.