The Style of “Young Goodman Brown” Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story or tale, “Young Goodman Brown,” is an interesting example of the multifaceted style of author, which will be discussed in this essay. Edgar Allan Poe in "Twice-Told Tales - A Review", published in Graham's Magazine in May 1842, comments on Hawthorne's "originality" and "his quiet and sober manner" which characterize his style: The Essays of Hawthorne have many character of Irving, with more originality and less polish; while, compared with the Spectator, they have a vast superiority in every point. The Spectator, Mr. Irving, and Mr. Hawthorne have in common that quiet, sober manner which we have chosen to call repose. . . . In the essays before us the lack of effort is too obvious to be mistaken, and a strong undercurrent of suggestion flows continually beneath the overcurrent of quiet thesis. In short, these effusions of Mr. Hawthorne are the product of a truly imaginative intellect, restrained and to some extent repressed by rigor of taste, by constitutional melancholy, and by indolence. Peter Conn in "Finding a Voice in a New Nation" reveals a characteristic of Hawthorne's style with regard to his short stories: "Almost all of Hawthorne's finest stories are distant in time or space" (82). Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale "Young Goodman Brown" is no exception to this rule, being set in the historic town of Salem, Massachusetts, in the 1600s. Herman Melville in "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (in The Literary World 17, August 24, 1850) has a remarkable comment on Hawthorne's style: Nathaniel Hawthorne is still a man who is almost completely wrong among men. Here and there, in some quiet armchair in the noisy city, or in some deep corner among the silent mountains, he can be appreciated for a part of what he is. But unlike Shakespeare, who was forced to take a contrary course by circumstances, Hawthorne (either from simple reluctance or ineptitude) abstains from all popularizing noise and spectacle of large-scale farce and blood-stained tragedy; content with the calm and rich words of a great intellect at rest, and which sends few thoughts into circulation, unless they are arterialized in his great warm lungs and developed in his honest heart. How beautifully does this reviewer capture Hawthorne's fundamental attitude, which eschews "noise and spectacle" and emphasizes his "rich sayings ».