Irony In

Webster's English dictionary defines hysteria as a psychoneurosis marked by emotional excitability and disturbances of the psychic,

sensory, vasomotor, and visceral functions or behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess. The

story of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" seems to be a classic tale of hysteria. It is the story of a naive young man who leaves his

town of Salem, Massachusetts to go on an undisclosed journey into the woods that, apparently, his forefathers had taken before him. While on his

journey he see sees ungodly things that are totally alien to the Puritanical world he knows. Because these events are so atypical to Puritanical

Salem it leads me to believe that Young Goodman Brown suffered from a case of hysteria.

When we first meet the character of Goodman Brown, he is bidding his young wife Faith farewell. The main thing about Faith that Hawthorne

makes us associate with her are the pink ribbons in her cap. Pink is a color that is rather unusual in Puritanical New England. The colors

associated with the Puritans are usually drab ones, so we automatically begin to think of Faith as an exceptional character. In Goodman Brown's

eyes, Faith is the epitome of all that is good and pure.

As Brown embarks upon his journey into the dark and secluded woods, we get hint of his neuroses while hes walking, when he says

"There might be a devilish Indian behind every tree," and then he exclaims, "What if the devil himself