Comparing Themes and Plots

In this lesson, the students will read Young Goodman Brown and The Minister's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne and write an essay comparing the themes and the plots in the two stories.

In this lesson, the students will learn about themes. First, the students will read the two short stories titled Young Goodman Brown and The Minister's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne. As they read each story, they will take notes on the sections that reveal the theme. Then, they will take their notes and write an essay comparing the themes and the plots of each short story. The theme is the main idea of a story. It is what the author wants to reveal to readers.

When the students start their essays, they need to first write what they think the theme was in each short story, and then they need to locate places in each story that support their idea about the themes and include those sections in their essays.

The students will answer the following questions in their essay. Who were the main characters in Young Goodman Brown and The Minister's Black Veil? What was the theme of the stories? In other words, what was the author wanting to reveal to readers as to why he wrote each story? How did the author reveal this theme throughout both stories? How did you feel about both stories and what the author tried to reveal?

You can grade the students' essays on sentence structure, paragraph structure, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. You can also grade the students on how well they interpreted the theme of the short story and the statements they used to support their idea.