How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #7
"There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshiping assembly.
You know how when you're little you think your parents are basically the best ever? And then when you grow up you start to realize that they're not so perfect after all? Yeah, that's what's happening here—only x10.
Quote #8
This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widows' weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers' wealth; and how fair damsels—blush not, sweet ones—have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole guest to an infant's funeral.
Goodman Brown is getting a new look at the past—not just his ancestral past, but the recent past of his neighbors. And it's not pretty. In fact, it involves infanticide, patricide, and husband-cide.
Quote #9
"By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places—whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest—where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power—than my power at its utmost—can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children, look upon each other." (64)
The dark minister declares that age and authority should not be sources of intimidation. Instead, the Salem elders—and all of Brown's ancestors—are united in a community of sin. In other words: stop idealizing the past.