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CRITICAL ESSAY ON NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE’S “YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN” I have chosen Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne, because firstly I had already read The Scarlet Letter, and I liked it very much; and secondly, because it maintains the same underlying moral conflict of the novel. The main difference is that the moral conflict is now much more personal for the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, than the one of The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. His family descended from the earliest settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Puritan congregation arrived from England. One of his great grandfathers was John Hathorne (Hawthorne added the “w” to his name when he began to write), one of the judges at the 1692 Salem witch trials. Hawthorne was both fascinated and disturbed by his family relationship with John Hawthorne. His father was a sea captain that died when the young Nathaniel was four years old. Hawthorne grew up in seclusion with his widowed mother Elizabeth, in the hard puritan society. In this oppressive ambient, Hawthorne probably spent much time in solitary reading, which made of him a young boy interested in writing. His live with his mother was very mo