Problem
Identify the speaker of the following words in Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown": "Depending on one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again, my children, to the communion of your race!". Does Goodman Brown trust the speaker and his words? What, if anything, is missing in the speaker's understanding about human nature in relation to truth, justice, and God? Compare these words and their speaker to those of the Misfit in Flannery O'Connor's story "A Good Man is Hard to Find."