Hawthorne’s Style in Young Goodman Brown :: Young Goodman Brown YGB

Hawthorne’s Style in â€Å"Young Goodman Brown†Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚         The style is â€Å"how speakers or writers say whatever it is that they say† (Abrams 303). This essay will present an analysis of the style found in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s â€Å"Young Goodman Brown.†    First of all, the reader can notice right away that Hawthorne writes in a well-read and cultivated style, avoiding the use of profanity, vulgar language, or words offensive to the ear. Consider his precise word selection from an enormous vocabulary:    They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveler exhorted his companion to make good speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly, that his arguments seemed rather to spring up in the bosom of his auditor, than to be suggested by himself. As they went, he plucked a branch of maple, to serve for a walking-stick, and began to strip it of the twigs and little boughs, which were wet with evening dew    Even the most emotional outburst in the entire story does not contain any language even remotely displeasing or uncultivated: "’Ha! ha! ha!’ roared Goodman Brown, when the wind laughed at him. "Let us hear which will laugh loudest! Think not to frighten me with your deviltry! Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil himself! and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear him as he fear you!’"    Though he has obviously read widely, where are the references to the works Hawthorne has enjoyed? It is a feature of his style in â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† that he does not allude to a single author or literary work. It would be so easy for him to do, and yet he restrains himself – for whatever literary reason.      Hawthorne’s style in this tale is, without a doubt, imaginative. Consider his description of the second traveler and his staff:    It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveler was about fifty years old, 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. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and would not have felt abashed at the governor's dinner-table, or in King William's court, were it possible that his affairs should call him thither.