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Nathaniel Hawthorne's stories "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Birthmark" both make use of dreams to affect the story and reveal the central characters. With each story, the dreams presented are extremely beneficial to the development of the story as they give the reader a new view of the plot itself, or the characters within. At the same time, however, it becomes difficult to determine how much of the dream has been affected by the character, and how much is pure fantasy. This is true with Young Goodman Brown, who cannot determine whether the events in his life actually occurred, or if they simply were created in his troubled mind while he slept. In "The Birthmark," Aylmer too is haunted by his night-time musings as he dreams of mutilating his wife in order to rid her of a small birthmark. This small detail later turns out to foreshadow the conclusion of the story, while giving readers further insight into his diabolical nature. Dreams thusly play an important developmental role in the explication of Hawthorne's characters.
Young Goodman Brown's dream near the end of his story has a most profound effect on his character. After a night of making deals with the Devil, having all of his fellow countrymen show their Satanic sympathies and himself becoming affiliated with the Fallen Angel, Brown understandably looks to account these incredible events to a dream state. However, Brown acts coldly towards Faith after that particular night, and completely changes his demeaner as he begins to question whether the dream was, in fact, a dream, or reality. What may have been but a dream turns out to haunt Brown for the rest of his life, as he can no longer accept the people in his life for what they appear to be, and can not forget that he saw them all at the witch-meeting. In contrast, is the debatable question of whether or not the dream was only a "wild dream" (Hawthorne, 318). If Young Goodman Brown indeed did dream of the witch-meeting, then he has wasted his life with his unrestrained, unrelenting paranoia. Because of the ambiguity of the situation, where neither the reader, narrator nor protagonist can be sure of the validity of the dream's depictions of the residents of Salem, Hawthorne makes it difficult of analyze Brown's character. It it therefore impossible to come to any absolute conclusions regarding the nature of Young Goodman Brown as one cannot accurately assess what has happened to him, and the consequences of those events.
In "The Birthmark," Aylmer has a dream in which he commits an act of unspeakable brutality to his wife. This dream provides the reader with an insight into his personality, as we begin to realize that Aylmer will stop at nothing in order to destroy the slight imperfection on the cheek of Georgianna. As a dream can be perceived as an insight into one's unconscious mind, where thoughts run pure and untouched by the conscious self, Aylmer's dream can not be ignored, and Georgianna is aware of this. We are able to see that Aylmer is not just a selfish man, thinking only of himself as he demands these concessions from his wife, but that he is unable to control his desires, much like child. Resulting from this new view of Hawthorne's character, we must now become aware that Aylmer is bound by nothing in his quest for what he understands to be perfection.
Hawthorne is able to change our views on his characters with the simple use of dreams. Dreams prove to be an effective plot device in both "The Birthmark" and "Young Goodman Brown" as they provide an air of uncertainty to the character that they are associated with. Aylmer, in "The Birthmark," is a husband who questions the beauty of his bride, which is, at least, unsettling, until his dream of butchering Georgianna is revealed. Troubled, too is Young Goodman Brown, who can not determine whether or not the incredible visions of the previous night were real. As a precaution, he avoids contact with the dream-related peole and lives the remainder of his life alone, but surrounded by those who were once his friends, associates, and family. As evidenced by these two short stories, we can see the important role that dreams can play in the effective telling of a tale.
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