Essay on The Value of Dreams in Hawthornes Young Goodman...

Young Goodman Brown:nbsp; The Value of Dreams Young Goodman Brownnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;The Birthmarknbsp; nbsp;Nathaniel Hawthornes 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†¦show more content†¦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 dreams depictions of the residents of Salem, Hawthorne makes it difficult of analyze Browns 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 happ ened to him, and the consequences of those events. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;In The Birthmark, Aylmer has a dream in which he commits an act ofShow MoreRelatedThe Dichotomy of Self Reliance and Conformity1169 Words   |  5 Pagesdominated by an era of emotional and individualistic values of oneself, and a powerful sense of limitless possibilities. This was the Romanticism Period. An incredible number of miraculous masterpieces were contrived during this period of enlightenment, including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s dramatically thematic and ambiguous short story, â€Å"Young Goodman Brown†, as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s intriguingly influential and uplifting essay, â€Å"Self-Reliance†. 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