Difficultys when reading YGB

          In the short story young goodman brown by Nathaniel Hawthorn, there were a few things that through me off. the first thing is, I cant understand the close mindedness of these people, the puritans. It seems to me that in the effort of becoming pure, people need to give up a lot of things that are unnecessary, and as a result they begin to resent the purifying processes of daily life. That resentment festers and grows into a deep hatred for the religion and consequently you have people retaliating in there own ways. However, they can not be public with there retaliation because the religion is so closely tied to their government, that someone hearing you talk about the rules in a negative way may lead to your exile or even your death, because the puritans where that strict. So it seems to me that being the best puritan you can be and getting that recognition from the people in your society is the mentality that eventually leads the puritans to driving themselves into insanity.  It is a very heavy worry to be self conscience. often times people find the answers in their religions, but when the religion is what is causes the worries than that is when you have to question the purpose of religion. what they failed to realize is the temporariness in everything around us. they felt so strongly about following rules and staying pure, that they hindered the mental and social growths of their societies. i guess i am confused on the logic that they found....

I find it curious why the puritans would make these rules so strict knowing how hard it was to follow them. goodman brown is a recognized and well respected person in his society so that should speak to his character a bit. we know that puritans like him! and Puritans pretty much dont like anything that isnt good in gods eyes. But even HE is tempted to go to the forest. Why would such a high calliber man be tempted? well my answer is it is becasue he wants the power that hes been missing out on his whole life! he wants to dabble in the devils water, and who can blame him, its only human to want to do forbidden things.

 the fact that he wants to go to the forest is not the problem here. the problem is that he has never gone to the forest ever befor! if he had gone, the temptation would have been far less and he wouldnt have had to feed his hunger.