The title characters of Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" and Nathanial Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" share common traits -- those of arrogance, righteousness and a belief that they could raise themselves to the level of the gods. The
paper shows that both sought to define the wicked, though only Oedipus truly succeeded because he was determined to discover the truth, even if it meant his own destruction. The paper shows that Goodman Brown, through fear or stupid, smug piety never confirmed or denied whether his one defining event -- that wild witch meeting in the woods -- was reality or merely a dream.