The Ambiguity in "Young Goodman Brown" Literary critics agree that there is considerable ambiguity in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown." This essay aims to illustrate the previous statement and analyze the cause of this ambiguity. Henry James in Hawthorne, when discussing "Young Goodman Brown", comments on how imaginative it is, then mentions how Hawthorne is allegorical and how allegory must be expressed clearly. : I frankly admit that I have, in general, little pleasure in it, and that it has never seemed to me to be, so to speak, a literary form of the first order. . . . But that risks spoiling two good things: a story and a moral, a meaning and a form; and this taste is responsible for much of the forced writing that has been inflicted on the world. The only cases where it is bearable is when it is extremely spontaneous, when the analogy presents itself with eager promptness. When he shows signs of having been groped and sought, the necessary illusion is of course absent and the failure is complete. Then the machinery alone is visible and the goal for which it operates becomes indifferent (50). When you have to grope and grope to find the meaning of a tale, then there is a “failure” in the work, as Henry James says. This is unfortunately the case with “Young Goodman Brown”. It is so ambiguous at many points in the tale that a blur rather than a distinct image forms in the reader's mind. The Norton Anthology: American Literature states in "Nathaniel Hawthorne": Above all, his theme was curiosity about recessions. other masculine and feminine beings. About this theme he has always been ambivalent...... middle of paper......, Nathaniel. The Complete Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1959. James, Henry. Hawthorn. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1997. Lang, H.J. “How ambiguous is Hawthorne.” In Hawthorne – A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by AN Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Martin, Terence. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Twayne Publishers Inc., 1965. Melville, Hermann. “Hawthorne and his mosses.” In The Norton Anthology: American Literature, edited by Baym et al. New York: WW Norton and Co., 1995. “Nathaniel Hawthorne.” The Norton Anthology: American Literature, edited by Baym et al. New York: WW Norton and Co., 1995. Wagenknecht, Edward. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Man, His Tales and Romances. New York: Continuum Publishing Co..., 1989.