File: Tab 6 Analysis
English
Blaber
Socratic Seminar “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Preparing for the Socratic Seminar
• Carefully read the text for both facts and ideas.
• Underline or highlight ideas that are especially intriguing or meaningful.
• Make notes in the margin for easy reference.
• Prepare a set of three typed seminar questions and answers. I have provided two
discussion questions for this essay. Write responses to these questions; also, write and
respond to one question of your own.
• Be prepared to support your ideas with textual evidence.
On each seminar day you will need to bring your text, your questions, and any
preparatory notes you have made. By the end of the seminar, you should have made a number of
significant contributions to the discussion-----at least two per seminar.
I will grade you, in part, on how much you participate, the quality of your preparation,
and the depth of your comments during the seminar.
1. The Forest: The setting for Hawthorne’s story is revealed in the first sentence: it is
sunset in Salem Village. Even today, the village of Salem is inexorably linked to the
witch trials, and this would certainly have been the case in 1846, when Hawthorne
was writing ‘‘Young Goodman Brown.’’ As Brown leaves the relative safety of the
village for the forest, darkness is falling and the setting grows more and more sinister.
Deep in the forests of Salem at ‘‘the witching hour,’’ the paranoid Goodman Brown
imagines ‘‘a devilish Indian behind every tree’’ (para. 9). Compare the setting of the
forest in this story with the forest as a setting in The Scarlet Letter. Does the forest
represent the same ideas, or different ideas, in each story?
2. Sin: Like Dimmesdale during his walk back from the woods, and like Hester after she
puts on the scarlet letter, Brown believes he can preternaturally sense the sins of
others. What comment does this story make on the nature of sin, confession, and
mercy?
3. Write and respond to an original question of your own.