Solitude and Isolation of Hawthorne and Young Goodman...

In the Nathaniel Hawthorne tale, â€Å"Young Goodman Brown,† we see and feel the solitude/isolation of the protagonist, Goodman. Is this solitude not a reflection of the very life of the author? At the very outset of the tale we see a purposeful secretiveness if not outright deception by Goodman Brown when his wife of three months pleads with him to stay home on this particular night: Dearest heart, whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, prythee, put off your journey until sunrise, and sleep in your own bed tonight. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts, that shes afeard of herself, sometimes. Pray, tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the†¦show more content†¦This state would continue until his dying day: The next morning, young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old minister . . . . He shrank from the venerable saint, as if to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard through the open window. What God doth the wizard pray to? quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine, at her own lattice, catechising a little girl, who had brought her a pint of mornings milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child, as from the grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith. . . . But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting. . . . Often, awaking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith, and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled, and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors, not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dyingShow MoreRelatedEssay Theme of Alienation in Literature929 Words   |  4 Pages A common theme among the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne is alienation. Alienation is defined as emotional isolation or dissociation from others. In Hawthornes novels and short stories, characters are consistently alienated and experience isolation from society. These characters are separated from their loved ones both physically and psychologically. 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(98-99) Although he made the remark in a different context, one would naturally associate Hawthorne and Melville with the comment, while Emersons might be one of the last names to mind. For the modern reader, who is often in the habit of assuming that the most profound and incisive apprehension of reality is a sense of tragedy, Emerson seems to have lost his grip. He has often been charged