In “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the main character
ventures into the forest to participate in what we understand to be some kind of satanic
ritual with a companion who is most likely Satan himself. While on his way there, he
encounters friends, neighbors, and eventually his own wife. He doubts whether he should
turn back, and eventually wonders whether the whole experience was a dream. Even so,
the experience leaves him shattered and questioning the nature of man, even until his
death. For Hawthorne, the story is about the unchanging human tendency towards evil
thoughts and deeds, even where the person seems to be kind, moral, and religious.
The choice of the name of the wife “Faith” is one of the first symbols in the story.
Brown says that “after this one night, I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven” (p.
1). This is typical of the characters in the story, who generally follow a moral and upright
path. They believe, like Goodman Brown, that they can follow the devil for just one
night, and still go to heaven. In fact, it’s not possible to be immoral for a short period and
still remain a moral person. Hawthorne’s point is that all people are subject to temptation,
and occasionally yield to it, and that this evil part of human nature defines them more
than they may think that it does, even though they hide it on the outside.
As Goodman Brown progresses through the forest, he learns that deacons,
selectmen, and politicions have consorted with the devil, as have members of his own
family. He encounters Goody Cloyse, who he says taught him his catechism, and Satan
greets her as a friend, and she reveals that she too is going to “the meeting”. He also
encounters the deacon and minister of the church on their way. Both of these characters
reveal their human frailties. Goody Cloyse names Goody Cory as an “unhanged witch”
(p. 4), revealing her tendency to judge other humans too quickly and harshly. The deacon
and minister joke that they would rather “miss an ordination dinner” (p. 5) than the
current meeting, and that there will be a “goodly young women” (p. 5) there. They show
that even as officials of the church, they are still subject to human weaknesses of gluttony
and lust. Goodman Brown, being young, had previously thought that they were above
such things; he says, “were I to go on with thee, how should I meet the eye of that good
old man, our minister, at Salem village?” (p. 3) Meeting the minister and the deacon on
their way to the same meeting shakes his faith that even church officials are above
temptation.
At the meeting, Goodman Brown discovers that everyone is together: the church
officials, along with supposedly pious people such as the “chaste dames and dewy
virgins” (p.6.), but also the “men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame” (p. 6). In
other words, no one is above the evil that is a part of nature. When Goodman Brown
discovers the breadth of the Devil’s reach, he cries out: "My Faith is gone!" cried he,
after one stupefied moment. "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come,
devil; for to thee is this world given." (p. 6) Faith, here, refers to his own wife, but
symbolically, to his belief in the goodness of mankind.
In the end of the story, Goodman Brown is miserable and grim until the end of his
days, turning away from his family, church, neighbors, and other possible sources of
comfort. His realization of the evil nature of man, like the original loss of innocence in
the Garden of Eden, has made him wiser, with his eyes opened to the nature of sin, but
also less happy, and less childlike. Like Adam and Eve, when they ate the forbidden fruit
and came to the knowledge of good and evil, Goodman Brown was symbolically cast
from the garden and was unable to continue to live in a state of innocence and bliss.