Young Man

In the two short stories, “Young Goodman Brown” and, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts a romantic view of people and sin. Hawthorne himself is the great grandson of one of the judges who accused people mistakenly at the Salem Witch Trials. Because of this memory, he is tormented by morals, and most of his literature is romance, where the setting is dark and gloomy and the main character does not give in to evil, even though he or she experiences its powerful prevalence. Apart from the theme and setting distinct to his works, his writing style depicts the age and place his stories are written. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories are very similar in structure and in message, and can be distinguished as his stories by a mature reader through comparison.

The most evident and clear resemblance in both stories is that both have a dark and gloomy setting. In fact both stories could be interpreted being in the same town. The town is very religious, extremely opposed to sin, or as they are shown out to be at first impression, and in both stories the atmosphere and surroundings give an alienated and dark touch to the stories. In, “The Minister’s Black Veil” the main character is a Parson tormented by his sin. In “Young Goodman Brown,” the main character is a chaste man who is tempted to sin for the devil. Religion plays an important role in the way the story is explained. In the “Young Goodman Brown,” the dark and gloomy surrounding include, “the forest, laughing like demons,” giving a reader a feel for the frightening, tense atmosphere. In “the ministers black veil” the veil itself symbolizes how the Minister hides his sin behind a black cloth, showing that he, like everyone else, has secret sin which he will take to his death bed. This veil also makes the story seem very desperate and mysterious, and a similar bitterness occurs in both stories. Both stories are set and written in similar situations, surrounding, and so they seem repetitions of