Hawthorne clearly wanted to distance himself from his hanging-judge ancestor, John
Hathorne, and he began that process by dropping the "w" from his last name. Denying
one's name often signals a denial of family, and in Hawthorne's case, it is reasonable to
believe that he wanted to atone for his great-grandfather's actions by depicting the negative
effects of Puritanism on men and society. Several of Hawthorne's short stories, including
"" and "," explore the disastrous sense of guilt on man's view of the
world.
Among the many things that Puritans feared, dreams were close to the
top of their list simply because dreams could not be controlled and, more important, left the
dreamer susceptible to the Devil's intervention. If we can agree that Goodman Brown's journey
through the forest is part of a dream vision, then we can see that Brown's desire to explore his
dark...
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