MANKIND'S INHERENT EVIL Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown" tells the story of a young man who lives in Salem, Massachusetts. In the story, Goodman Brown takes a journey through the "heathen wilderness" (201) and comes upon a witchcraft ceremony. All of the townspeople are there, which leads Brown to believe that they are all evil. At the end of the story, Brown wakes up in the woods and walks back into town. He does …
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…that there is no escape from this sin, and that we must hold on to our faith in order to get into Heaven. Brown learns that he cannot escape his sin, even though he is not sure if the what he experienced was real or a dream. WORK CITED Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Young Goodman Brown." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 1999. 196-206.