Here is the synopsis of our sample research paper on Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown' / The Forest. Have the paper e-mailed to you 24/7/365.
Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 3 page essay analyzing the relevance of the forest motif to the plot of the story. It concludes that the forest symbolizes the unconscious, and because Goodman Brown was too self-righteous to to accept with tolerance and grace the visions he would receive there, he was changed for the worse. No additional sources cited.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_Ybrown.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
and endurance; it took real fortitude to survive there, and a young person entering this forest would not emerge the same. But this story is more symbolic than realistic, and
the dangers of this forest are not from Indians or bears; they are dangers of the spirit. It is no accident that such an experience should have taken place in
a forest, for there is a long and extremely profound tradition in our literature for experiences of this nature having taken place in forest settings. For example, in the folk
tale The Three Bears, Goldilocks encounters the cottage of the three bears in a forest; in Hansel and Gretel, the childrens father takes them off into the forest to abandon
them and they have to find their way back out; in Red Riding Hood, the little girl has to travel through the forest to her grandmothers house. In all of
these tales, the motif of the forest denotes uncharted territory, alive with danger, and the main character emerges from the forest experience more mature. Therefore, in each of these stories,
as well as "Young Goodman Brown," the forest symbolizes the unconscious, the place where the true transformations of our inner lives take place. Hawthorne notes that this story takes place
in Salem, Massachusetts, forever immortalized as the scene of the Salem witch trials, and those supposed covens did meet in the forest. We are never told in Hawthornes story why
Goodman Brown goes into the forest in the first place, but the time and setting leave us no doubt about what he is going to find there. Apparently he is
going there for a specific reason of which he is fully cognizant, because Hawthorne tells us Goodman Brown regrets parting from Faith to go into the forest "on his present
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