English 10
Mr. Gunnar
OVER PLEASE
Analyzing "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Learning Goals:
Students will demonstrate their understanding of:
• close reading and annotating texts;
• the definition of allegory; the roles of characters in allegory;
• the role of symbolism in the development of meaning in literature;
• how authors use imagery to create mood;
• how mood can foreshadow the nature of future action in a story;
• how to develop a cogent and focused thesis statement;
• how to support your thesis with textual evidence;
• how to effectively incorporate quotes into your analysis;
• how to avoid simple summary.
Directions: Read the story completely once before annotating it. Define bold terms in your logs.
Before you read the story:
• Read the “Close Reading” handout
Before you reread and annotate the story:
• Consider the questions below to help guide your annotations.
Immediately after you reread the story:
• Develop 4 level two, and 3 level three questions.
1. How does the setting add to the meaning of the story: sunset and night, dreary road, gloomiest trees,
narrow path creeping through, lonely, peculiarity in solitude? How does this imagery create the mood?
How does this mood help us predict the nature of Young Goodman Brown’s journey?
2. Discuss the significance of "Faith kept me back awhile."
3. Why do you think Faith wore pink ribbons? Hint: think of Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, and
the connotation of colors.
4. Discuss the significance of the second traveller (sic.), ". . . apparently in the same rank of life as
Goodman Brown and bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression
than features. Still they might have been taken for father and son." Is he Brown’s alter ego?
5. Interpret the description of the staff "which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously
wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle like a living serpent. This, of course, must
have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light." Why the uncertainty?
6. When the fellow traveller states, "I have been well acquainted with your family… I helped your
grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem.
… The deacons of many a church have drunk wine with me; the select men of divers town make me
