If you had asked me a couple months ago if literally everyone who went to high school in the United States had read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1835 short story “Young Goodman Brown”, I’d have said yes. It’s a seminal part of American literature (where you would have read it) and so would have been on the syllabus of pretty much every American lit class. And Hawthorne certainly was a very important writer of his era, laying a lot of ground work for future work in writing and theater and film.
But then I mentioned the story to my wife and it turns out she didn’t know it. She’s well educated, too. Now I have to assume that a bunch of other people also haven’t read the story. Which is totally wild! That lit a little bit of a fire under me to record and publish this episode of The Black Laser Reads.
“Young Goodman Brown” is the story of a young feller named Brown who lives in Puritan-era Salem, Massachusetts. He leaves his wife behind to tend to some nefarious, unspecified errand in the woods during the night of the story. There he meets a suspicious man and then the story unfurls.
It’s got twists! It’s got turns! It’s got allegory! It’s pretty short!
Honestly, if you have any sort of ability to read critically, you’re going to understand the thrust of this one. It’s great, but it doesn’t really make you work too hard to extract its meaning. And, you know, it’s got the devil in it. Sorry for spoilers for a short story from 191 years ago.
Enjoy.
The text for this episode came from Project Gutenberg. If you are interested in reading “Young Goodman Brown” which is found in Mosses From An Old Manse, you can download a public domain e-book here.
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