story, “Young Goodman Brown”. “The tale becomes in great part, thus, a record of temptation” (Pualits 578-579). The author of “Young Goodman Brown”, Nathaniel Hawthorne, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. His family has a long standing history in Salem, as his relative John Hathorne was a judge in the Witch Trials. Soon after the trials a ‘w’ was added to the family’s last name to distance themselves from the horrors of the time (Nathaniel Hawthorne Biography). Set during
read this semester the subject of organized religion has been addressed in either a positive or negative way. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn all address the topic of the church and organized religion, all with relatively similar views. In “Young Goodman Brown,” we see a negative attitude towards the Church of Puritan New England. In “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” we