Young Goodman Brown and The Birthmark: The Benefit of Dreams Young Goodman Brown and The Birthmark, both stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, use dreams to uncover the central characters and put influence on the story. In each story, the dreams manifested are extremely helpful to the development of the story. These dreams show a new aspect of the characters within and the plot itself. At the same time, however, it becomes difficult to determine how much of the dream is affected by the character, and how much is pure imagination. In The Birthmark, Aylmer is haunted by his