The narration in “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne was written partially in third-person limited view and in third-person omniscient view which means that the narrator stands outside the story and can see into the thoughts and feelings of only one or two characters in the story. In this case, the narrator can look into Young Goodman Brown and tell us what Brown is thinking and felling at any given moment, but the narrator’s power to observe the inner person is limited. The narrator is limited, meaning that the narrator reports Young Goodman Brown’s inner thoughts and feelings but leaves the reader to draw his or her own conclusions about those thoughts and feelings. In other words, the narrator does not judge the character in a moral sense. When Brown leaves his wife, Faith, to begin his dark journey into the forest, the narrator observes his inner feelings of guilt. “What a wretch his I am I to leave her on such an errand! . . . Well, she’s a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.” Hawthorne wants is to understand that Young Goodman Brown fully appreciates the danger this journey poses to his soul but, more important, the temptation to walk on the Puritan wild side is too great to be overcome. The narrator’s limited omniscience is obvious when Young Goodman Brown’s traveling companion appears. “As nearly as could 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.” The narrators use of the duel point-of-view allows him to leave the reader guessing about everything that happens to Young Goodman Brown.
