Through the covenant Goodman has made with the Devil, he has agreed to leave his wife, Faith, and walk through the forest with the Devil for one night as the Devil attempts to convert Goodman from Christianity.
Goodman enters into this with great resolve that his survival and test of faith will not change, but the depth of his faith is fairly easily uprooted. As Goodman and the Devil are walking, Goodman comes upon his old catechism teacher, Goody Cloyse, who is headed to the Devil’s meeting that
Goodman is being led to. Goodman is stunned at the sight of her, as he had considered her his moral and spiritual guide. This is the beginning of where Goodman’s faith fails.
As Goodman continues on, he sees many of the townspeople he had respected and admired so much for their devout faith in God. Goodman’s faith begins to crumble because his Achilles heel was the pride he had in believing he was a pious man. His faith was never based on an internal relationship with God; instead, his faith was mirrored and reflected by the community he revered.
As those around him showed their true following, Goodman lost all faith, and became empty.
On this journey, Goodman went into the forest in search of his soul, following the Devil.
His pride led him believing his faith would be steadfast, but he found that his faith had been based on others who had secretly chosen the Devil. This destroyed his resolve, and in this sense, the Devil won his fight against Goodman Brown.
Although
Goodman does not convert to worship the Devil as the others have, what he chooses is the greater evil. By losing everything about his faith, he loses his soul.
Goodman’s existence becomes nothingness.
He turned his own anger about his faith failing him into believing the entire world was only evil. What Goodman saw on his journey poisoned his soul, leaving him a bitter, miserable man. Goodman chose isolation rather than turning to
God, and he lived a sad life in scorn of all others he had seen that night on his fateful journey into the forest.
The Devil is the protagonist. He is the question of doubt in Brown's mind. He is who throws the wrench into your daily routine. Without him where would Brown be? Without giving him the question of his own morality and beliefs goodman brown would not know what to do. He is the little question we have that says. Should I? Could I? Will I?
Goodman Brown is a blind man, not aware of the world around him. His epiphany is when he finds out the whole town around him is apart of some sort of occult. Practicing witchcraft and devil worship. When he finds out his wife is part of this malevolent group.
He looses all faith in himself, mankind and the family he once had faith in. Goodman

Brown is a Naiive man that once believed the world around him was everything he knew it was and thought it was supposed to be. Now he knows the Truth.
Faith is not only Brown's wife but she is significant for the name that she is given. Her gift to Brown isn't a gift of love or passion. Her gift to him is an awakening to the world around him.
Nathaniel Hawthorne is considered a romantic writer, but his works show an exploration of evil and darkness.
Young Goodman Brown is written as an internal psychological journey , where Brown is unaware of his role and of his sin. This work contains gothic elements, and Hawthorne leaves Brown miserable and isolated in his life. Hawthorne does not allow Brown to transcend and leaves Brown blinded to what he is doing. Also lending insight to
Hawthorne is another work, The Minister's Black Veil. In this short story, Hawthorne makes an attack on Calvinism and orginal sin. Original sin is what isolates the main character, the minister, and makes him only an object in the setting. The veil symbolizes evil, tainting everything, but the minister will not remove it from his face. The veil reveals sin and the minister is horrified b/c he see his own reflection and nature as being evil and disguised.
A Headstone

People are frightened of the minister in this veil, and he is equally frightened of them as their sins are revealed. Hawthorne is an author only comparable to Edgar Allen Poe in the time context of which their works were written. Both authors focus on the dark side of the mind and do not allow their characters to transcend. Hawthorne ventures inside himself to see evil and darkness. There is no unity, only isolation. The writing style is a romantic attack on
Calvinism and incorporates Gothesism. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar
Allen Poe are the authors credited with the origination of Gothesism, leading to an The story Young Goodman is allegorical, meaning that the characters and objects in the story represent abstract ideas.
The evil in Brown’s world is frequently represented in the short story.
The names of the first two characters introduced in the story, Young Goodman Brown and his wife Faith, are both symbolic. Brown’s youth and good nature are symbolized by his name. Tharpe writes about Brown, “he represents the young person’s introduction into human ways. It is important that his innocence should derive from his youth”
(Tharpe 76). Brown’s youth suggests that he is an uncorrupted and innocent young man.
Hawthorne, by writing, “Faith, as the wife was aptly named,” suggests that Brown’s wife embodies the goodness that is found in a young wife (Hawthorne 385). Brown’s marriage to Faith symbolizes that he clings to a faith in good in the world. The pink ribbon worn in
Faith’s hair serves as “an emblem of heavenly faith” (Fogle 24). Later in the story, when
Brown meets his companion in the woods, he declares, “Faith kept me back awhile”
(Hawthorne 386). Here, Hawthorne uses the name of Brown’s wife as a symbol for
Brown’s personal faith in goodness. At this point in the story, Brown’s conscious is keeping him from embracing the evil ways of his companion. The image that Hawthorne creates of Brown putting his head back across the threshold of his house to kiss his wife goodbye symbolizes Brown’s reservations of surrendering to the devil’s evil ways.
Brown does, despite his wavering conscious, surrender to an impulse to follow an evil path and begin his journey into the woods.
Brown’s journey through the forest is on a narrow, dark, and dreary path. The darkness and dreariness symbolize the evil that lurks in the forest. Fogle notes that in the forest,
“the dark subterranean forces of the human spirit riot unchecked” (Fogle 26). The narrowness of the path symbolizes that Brown is surrounded by evil. The idea that
Brown may never return to the state of innocence from which he came is suggested by the fact that the woods seem to close immediately behind him.
The trail being long and windy symbolizes how far Brown’s conscious must travel from innocence to realize the evil in his world.
In the forest, Brown meets his companion, a character who symbolizes the devil.
The devil offers Brown his walking staff that is described as having “the likeness of a great black snake” (Hawthorne 387). The snake “might also be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a live serpent” (Hawthorne 387). The snake-like appearance of the staff symbolizes the sly and treacherous character of Brown’s companion. The snake appearing to be alive symbolizes that the devil, with his staff, is already preying on Brown. Brown is offered

the staff, but objects to holding such an instrument of evil. Brown’s rejection of the staff symbolizes Brown’s reluctance to succumb to the evil in the world.
Brown sees his fathers as symbols of honest and good Christian men, but as the devil tells Brown that he has been well acquainted with his family, his fathers become symbols of people that embody the evil that surrounds Brown.
The devil tells
Brown that he has a general acquaintance with the people of New England. Brown is amazed to learn that his minister and his Sunday school teacher, Goody Cloyse, support the interests of the devil. Goody Cloyse symbolizes a person who accepts evil because she tells the devil that she is ready for the meeting. She screams, “The devil!” when touched by the devil’s staff, suggesting that she is under the devil’s control and possesses evil. Both the minister and Deacon Gookin are heading to the meeting with the devil.
Brown learns that, like his fathers, Goody Cloyse, the minister, and Deacon Gookin also symbolize people who embody the evil present in his world.
Brown accepts a newly-made staff from the devil and hurries along the same evil path of his contemporaries.
The staff symbolizes a tool of evil, and Brown’s accepting it represents his beginning to accept the evil in his world.
Another symbol of Brown’s new commitment to evil is the pink ribbon that he catches falling from the sky. The ribbon symbolizes Brown’s loss of faith in good. Brown cries, “My Faith is gone!”
(Hawthorne 390). Again, the play on the name, “Faith,” suggests that not only is Brown’s wife gone, but so is his faith in the goodness in the world.
The scene of the witch meeting with the flaming altars symbolizes Brown’s baptism into the evil world that surrounds him. The evil that exists in the people of Salem is made evident by Hawthorne in this scene of devil worship . Here, Brown symbolically loses his faith in all that is good in the world.