Young Goodman Brown Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Edward J. Gallagher

Critical Essay by Edward J. Gallagher

SOURCE: "The Concluding Paragraph of 'Young Goodman Brown'," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. XII, No. 1, Winter, 1975, pp. 29-30.

In the essay below, Gallagher illustrates how the conclusion successfully completes the circular plot of "Young Goodman Brown."

In the concluding paragraph of "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne uses the forest experience to its fullest effect, moving Brown through another series of separations to the ultimate separation, from life itself. To some critics, in fact, the concluding paragraph itself has seemed a separation, breaking the neat circularity of Hawthorne's plot, moving in linear fashion through time from Brown's figurative death at the threshold of his house to his literal death at the threshold of the grave. Yet I agree wholeheartedly with Richard Abcarian, though for different reasons, that the paragraph is not anticlimactic, a digression, an example solely of Hawthorne's penchant for heavy moralizing, or a violation of the neatly...
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