Argumentative Essay On Young Goodman Brown

In the text, “Young Goodman Brown”, Brown’s gloom and withdrawal is justified by the shocking events in the forest. This is because, during his time in the forest, be bears witness to supernatural events in which he sees that many people he knows from the path of god are in reality on the path of the devil.
For Brown to be justified in his feelings, the events in question must be deemed events that were real. To start, when Brown first exited the woods after witnessing the ritual, he heard Deacon Gookin, a man at the ritual, praying. Upon hearing this, Brown asks himself “What God doth the wizard pray to?” because he knew that Gookin was a satanic worshiper. Additionally, when Goody Cloyse, another worshiper at the ritual, was talking with a young girl, Brown “snatched away the child as from the grasp of the fiend himself.” Both of these reactions show that Brown very much considered these events to have been real and that was

This event undermined everything that Brown had believed in, namely his religion, and fundamentally broke him, causing his gloom. This is shown later in the text when “On the Sabbath Day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he [Brown] could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly on his ear.” This shows that he could no longer listen to and be joyfully about his religion, as all he could think about was the sad fact that everyone there was a sinner.
On that fateful night in the woods Brown experiences a gathering of evil that would change his perception of life and religion. This event, while it may have been a dream, was real enough to Brown that it would replace any joy in his life with gloom for the rest of his years. Knowing the truth that all of his neighbors and friends were satanic worshipers was certainly justification enough for his withdrawal and