Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories Questions

Young Goodman Brown

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The names of actual persons do several things. First, by using a name like Faith for Young Goodman Brown's wife, we get not only a name, but what should be a personal characteristic, which should be the way she lives and thus becomes ironic when she is not like that at all. Names of real persons also give some sort of historic sense to the story. This is especially true about the stories which demonstrate the Puritan life, since those people and their behavior reflects a lifestyle that Hawthorne deplored because of, among other things, the involvement of one of his ancestors in the Salem witchcraft Trials,.