Essay Database

TO BE EVIL OR NOT TO BE…IS THAT THE QUESTION? “The man who walks with god always knows in what direction he is going” (qtd. in Punch Lines, Hutson). This quote has a direct irony in correlation to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale of “Young Goodman Brown”. Hawthorne’s profound short story is a pilgrimage to revelation for one devout Christian man; the idea that mankind, being himself, is not without sin and far from …

…inherent in everyone, most importantly himself. This leads him to a subsequent lifetime of ignorance, grievance, and hatred. By refusing to acknowledge the weaknesses in others, he becomes blind to the goodness as well. “In place of the needed capacity for both love and hate or, in the terms of the story, both evil and good, he develops only a great fear of moral maturity and of the knowledge and responsibility that maturity brings” (Adams 165).