Ellie Fairbanks
Mr. Bleck
Literature
Young Goodman Brown
Nathaniel Hathorne was born during 1804 in the city of Salem Massachusetts. His name changed later to Hawthorne so as to disassociate himself from his great great grandfather who was a judge at the Salem Witch Trials. (Cite) The shame that Hawthorne felt because a relative had participated in these trails as well as partook in the Puritanical beliefs of the day, might have been what led him to write the now famous, Young Goodman Brown. With this short story, many aspects of it are left open ended and up for interpretation, the narrator amongst them. Knowing what kind of narrator is speaking will help readers to conclude the reliability or unreliability of the story. Knowing the reliability will help readers know what has been gained or lost as mere readers. Nathanial Hawthorne uses the narration in Young Goodman Brown to voice his opinions about Puritanical beliefs.
Knowing what point of view the narrator is speaking from is important to knowing the truth and dependability behind the words. Young Goodman Brown is written in third person limited omniscience where the narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of one or some characters but not all. From using this kind of narration, Hawthorne “does not intend for you to question the narrator’s perspective. The author expects you to regard the narrators information, even the narrators’ value judgments, as objective, undistorted truth”(book). From this definition readers may assume that the narrator is therefore a reliable one. Hawthorne uses this technique because readers cannot then dispute the narrator, and must therefore listen to the underlying message about Puritanism.
A reliable narrator is also referred to as a credible or sympathetic narrator. “The personal involvement of a reliable narrator does not typically impede a truthful account of the story, and so determining reliability should be based in part on the narrator's ability to distance him or herself from his or her personal relations with other characters to provide a more impartial account”(Rimmon-Kenan). When Goodman Brown dies the narrator does a good job distancing himself from Brown by saying, “they (the people of his town) carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom”(141). This suggests no intimate connection between the narrator and the dead Brown because there is no sorrowful language mourning his death. By distancing the narrator from Brown we as readers, do not pick up on any partiality towards him, and therefore read the narrator as a knowing source who can only tell us Brown’s point of view. The narrator can be thought of Hawthorne manifesting his disrespect towards Puritanism through a scenario with a man and the devil.
The narrator seems to suggest that the puritans at the meeting in the forest, are disillusioned people who act holy in the day, worship Satan by night, and then act holy the next day. The narration brings up the idea that the puritan’s way of life is a restraint to human nature, which includes the balance of good and evil. Because the narration is reliable readers accept the idea that Hawthorne presents as a valid one.
The concept of reliable narration in the story of Young Goodman Brown is one that is important to the overall interpretation of the short story. Hawthorne wrote the story with a reliable narrator so that people can draw away a broader more generalized statement about societies gravitation to a balance of good and evil forces, as well as debunk the idea of stifling Puritanical beliefs . Without questioning what is true and false readers are allowed to simply read and let the story soak in and reread for further self enlightenment. With any story the narrator is the most important part and readers must constantly question the reliability that it presents. By deciding to write Young Goodman Brown in the context of a reliable narrator we receive all the benefits of Hawthorne’s views, without having to question the source.