Puritan superstition as reflected in Nathaniel hawthorne’s young goodman brown

Oleh :
Printa Pitaloka - C1397029 - Fak. Sastra dan Seni Rupa

Abstract This thesis discusses a puritan superstition as reflected in a short story Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Puritan superstition is particularly everything dealing with devil, Satan and the superstitious things. The writer was much interested in the puritan superstition phenomenon because it was a belief that was still in controversial. Many Puritan people believed it and some did not, including Goodman Brown, the character in the short story. The purpose of the research is to describe the puritan superstition within Goodman Brown. Through the analysis of plot, setting, character and theme of the story, it will be found the puritan superstition phenomena, so the structuralism theory is necessary to apply. Beside, the social and cultural condition of Puritan society at that time cannot be neglected. It was sociological of literature approach to find out the superstition phenomena in the society. It also revealed the author's view toward the topic. In the analysis the writer discussed plot of the story, Goodman Brown did not believe Satan, devil and other superstitious things, but when he went to jungle he met all of them. However he still did not want to believe it, cause it happened in his unconsciousness. The setting was Salem, New England in 17th century when Puritan people declared a war with witches. The character of Goodman Brown was known as a good man who has a strong faith and also has a wife named Faith. That was the reason why he did not believe the superstitious things. He also refused to hunt witches because he thought that they were not guilty. In such of social and cultural condition, Goodman Brown confused to put himself among his society. Hawthorne viewed that Goodman Brown's was a symbol of a fight between good and evil, and good is always win. From the analysis, the writer concluded that Puritan people believe in superstition, especially dealing with witches who supposed to be a woman who cooperate with Satan. And Satan was human being's enemy, they thought that killing the witches was killing the Satan.