"Young Goodman Brown", by
Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a story that is thick with allegory.
"Young
Goodman Brown" is a moral story which is told through the perversion of a
religious
leader. In "Young Goodman Brown", Goodman
Brown is a Puritan minister who lets his
excessive pride
in himself interfere with his relations with the community after he meets with
the
devil, and causes
him to live the life of an exile in his own community.
"Young Goodman Brown" begins when
Faith, Brown's wife, asks him not to go on an
"errand". Goodman Brown says to his "love and (my)
Faith" that "this one night I must tarry
away from
thee." When he says his
"love" and his "Faith", he is talking to his wife, but he
is also
talking to his
"faith" to God. He is
venturing into the woods to meet with the Devil, and by doing
so, he leaves his
unquestionable faith in God with his wife.
He resolves that he will "cling to her
skirts and follow
her to Heaven." This is an example
of the excessive pride because he feels that
he can sin and
meet with the Devil because of this promise that he made to himself. There is a
tremendous irony
to this promise because when Goodman Brown comes back at dawn; he can no
longer look at
his wife with the same faith he had before.
When Goodman Brown finally meets with the
Devil, he declares that the reason he was
late was because
"Faith kept me back awhile."
This statement has a double meaning because his
wife physically
prevented him from being on time for his meeting with the devil, but his faith
to
God i
psychologically delayed his meeting with the devil.
The Devil had with him a staff that
"bore the likeness of a great black snake". The staff
which looked like
a snake is a reference to the snake in the story of Adam and Eve. The snake led
Adam and Eve to
their destruction by leading them to the Tree of Knowledge. The Adam and
Eve story is
similar to Goodman Brown in that they are both seeking unfathomable amounts of
knowledge. Once Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of
Knowledge they were expelled from their
paradise. The Devil's staff eventually leads Goodman
Brown to the Devil's ceremony which
destroys Goodman
Brown's faith in his fellow man, therefore expelling him from his utopia.
Goodman Brown almost immediately declares
that he kept his meeting with the Devil and
no longer wishes
to continue on his errand with the Devil.
He says that he comes from a "race of
honest men and
good Christians" and that his father had never gone on this errand and nor
will he.
The Devil is
quick to point out however that he was with his father and grandfather when
they
were flogging a
woman or burning an Indian village, respectively. These acts are ironic in that
they were bad
deeds done in the name of good, and it shows that he does not come from
"good
Christians."
When Goodman Brown's first excuse not to
carry on with the errand proves to be
unconvincing, he
says he can't go because of his wife, "Faith". And because of her, he can not
carry out the
errand any further. At this point the Devil agrees with him and tells him to
turn back
to prevent that
"Faith should come to any harm" like the old woman in front of them
on the path.
Ironically,
Goodman Brown's faith is harmed because the woman on the path is the woman who
"taught him
his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual
adviser." The Devil and
the woman talk
and afterward, Brown continues to walk on with the Devil in the disbelief of
what
he had just
witnessed. Ironically, he blames the
woman for consorting with the Devil but his own
pride stops him
from realizing that his faults are the same as the woman's.
Brown again decides that he will no longer
to continue on his errand and rationalizes that
just because his
teacher was not going to heaven, why should he "quit my dear Faith, and go
after
her". At this, the Devil tosses Goodman Brown his
staff (which will lead him out of his Eden) and
leaves him.
Goodman Brown begins to think to himself
about his situation and his pride in himself
begins to
build. He "applauds himself
greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should
meet his
minister...And what calm sleep would be his...in the arms of Faith!" This is ironic
because at the
end of the story, he can not even look Faith in the eye, let alone sleep in her
arms.
As Goodman Brown
is feeling good about his strength in resisting the Devil, he hears the voices
of the minister
and Deacon Gookin. He overhears their
conversation and hears them discuss a
"goodly
young woman to be taken in to communion" that evening at that night's
meeting and fears
that it may be
his Faith.
When Goodman Brown hears this he becomes
weak and falls to the ground. He
"begins
to doubt whether
there really was a Heaven above him" and this is a key point when Goodman
Brown's faith
begins to wain. Goodman Brown in panic
declares that "With Heaven above, and
Faith below, I
will yet stand firm against the devil!"
Again, Brown makes a promise to keep his
faith unto
God. Then "a black mass of
cloud" goes in between Brown and the sky as if to block
his prayer from
heaven. Brown then hears what he
believed to be voices that he has before in the
community. Once Goodman Brown begins to doubt whether
this is really what he had heard or
not, the sound
comes to him again and this time it is followed by "one voice, of a young
woman".
Goodman believes
this is Faith and he yells out her name only to be mimicked by the echoes of
the
forest, as if his
calls to Faith were falling on deaf ears.
A pink ribbon flies through the air and
Goodman grabs
it. At this moment, he has lost all
faith in the world and declares that there is "no
good on
earth." Young Goodman Brown in this
scene is easily manipulated simply by the power
of
suggestion. The suggestion that the
woman in question is his Faith, and because of this, he
easily loses his
faith.
Goodman Brown then loses all of his
inhibitions and begins to laugh insanely.
He takes
hold of the staff
which causes him to seem to "fly along the forest-path". This image alludes to
that of Adam and
Eve being led out of the Garden of Eden as is Goodman Brown being led out of
his utopia by the
Devil's snakelike staff. Hawthorne at
this point remarks about "the instinct that
guides mortal man
to evil". This is a direct
statement from the author that he believes that man's
natural
inclination is to lean to evil than good.
Goodman Brown had at this point lost his faith in
God, therefore
there was nothing restraining his instincts from moving towards evil because he
had been lead out
from his utopian image of society.
At this point, Goodman Brown goes mad and
challenges evil. He feels that he will
be the
downfall of evil
and that he is strong enough to overcome it all. This is another demonstration of
Brown's excessive
pride and arrogance. He believes that he
is better than everyone else in that he
alone can destroy
evil.
Brown then comes upon the ceremony which
is setup like a perverted Puritan temple.
The
altar was a rock
in the middle of the congregation and there were four trees surrounding the
congregation with
their tops ablaze, like candles. A red
light rose and fell over the congregation
which cast a veil
of evil over the congregation over the devil worshippers.
Brown starts to take notice of the faces
that he sees in the service and he recognizes them
all, but he then
realizes that he does not see Faith and "hope came into his
heart". This is the first
time that the
word "hope" ever comes into the story and it is because this is the
true turning point
for Goodman
Brown. If Faith was not there, as he had
hoped, he would not have to live alone in
his community of
heathens, which he does not realize that he is already apart of. Another way
that the hope
could be looked at is that it is all one of "the Christian triptych".
(Capps 25) The
third part of the
triptych which is never mentioned throughout the story is charity. If Brown had
had
"charity" it would have been the "antidote that would have
allowed him to survive without
despair the
informed state in which he returned to Salem." (Camps 25)
The ceremony then begins with a a cry to
"Bring forth the converts!"
Surprisingly
Goodman Brown steps
forward. "He had no power to
retreat one step, nor to resist, even in
thought...". Goodman Brown at this point seems to be in a
trance and he loses control of his
body as he is
unconsciously entering this service of converts to the devil. The leader of the
service than
addresses the crowd of converts in a disturbing manner. He informs them that all the
members of the
congregation are the righteous, honest, and incorruptible of the
community. The
sermon leader
then informs the crowd of their leader's evil deeds such as attempted murder of
the
spouse and wife,
adultery, and obvious blasphemy. After
his sermon, the leader informs them to
look upon each
other and Goodman Brown finds himself face to face with Faith. The leader
begins up again
declaring that "Evil is the nature of mankind" and he welcomes the
converts to
"communion
of your race". (The "communion
of your race" statement reflects to the irony of
Brown's earlier
statement that he comes from "a race of honest men and good Christians.") The
leader than dips
his hand in the rock to draw a liquid from it and "to lay the mark of
baptism upon
their
foreheads". Brown than snaps out
from his trance and yells "Faith! Faith! Look up to
Heaven and resist
the wicked one!" At this, the ceremony
ends and Brown finds himself alone.
He does not know
whether Faith, his wife, had kept her faith, but he finds himself alone which
leads him to
believe that he is also alone in his faith.
Throughout the story, Brown lacks emotion
as a normal person would have had. The
closest Brown
comes to showing an emotion is when "a hanging twig, that had been all on
fire,
besprinkled his
cheek with the coldest dew." The
dew on his cheek represents a tear that Brown
is unable to
produce because of his lack of emotion.
Hawthorne shows that Brown has "no
compassion for
the weaknesses he sees in others, no remorse for his own sin, and no sorrow for
his loss of
faith." (Easterly 339) His lack of
remorse and compassion "condemns him to an
anguished life
that is spiritually and emotionally dissociated." (Easterly 341) This scene is an
example of how
Goodman Brown chose to follow his head rather than his heart. Had Brown
followed his
heart, he may have still lived a good life.
If he followed with his heart, he would
have been able to
sympathize with the community's weaknesses, but instead, he listened to his
head and
excommunicated himself from the community because he only thought of them as
heathens..
"Young Goodman Brown" ends with
Brown returning to Salem at early dawn and looking
around like a
"bewildered man." He cannot
believe that he is in the same place that he just the
night before;
because to him, Salem was no longer home.
He felt like an outsider in a world of
Devil worshippers
and because his "basic means of order, his religious system, is absent,
the
society he was
familiar with becomes nightmarish." (Shear 545) He comes back to the town
"projecting
his guilt onto those around him."
(Tritt 114) Brown expresses his
discomfort with his
new surroundings
and his excessive pride when he takes a child away from a blessing given by
Goody Cloyse, his
former Catechism teacher, as if he were taking the child "from the grasp
of the
fiend
himself." His anger towards the
community is exemplified when he sees Faith who is
overwhelmed with
excitement to see him and he looks "sternly and sadly into her face, and
passed
on without a
greeting." Brown cannot even stand
to look at his wife with whom he was at the
convert service
with. He feels that even though he was
at the Devil's service, he is still better than
everyone else
because of his excessive pride. Brown
feels he can push his own faults on to others
and look down at
them rather than look at himself and resolve his own faults with himself.
Goodman Brown was devastated by the
discovery that the potential for evil resides in
everybody. The rest of his life is destroyed because of
his inability to face this truth and live with
it. The story, which may have been a dream, and
not a real life event, planted the seed of doubt in
Brown's mind
which consequently cut him off from his fellow man and leaves him alone and
depressed. His life ends alone and miserable because he
was never able to look at himself and
realize that what
he believed were everyone else's faults were his as well. His excessive pride in
himself led to
his isolation from the community. Brown
was buried with "no hopeful verse upon
his tombstone;
for his dying hour was gloom."
Works Cited
Capps,
Jack L. "Hawthorne's Young
Goodman Brown", Explicator, Washington D.C.,
1982 Spring, 40:3, 25.
Easterly, Joan Elizabeth. "Lachrymal Imagery in Hawthorne's Young
Goodman Brown",
Studies in Short
Fiction, Newberry, S.C., 1991
Summer, 28:3, 339-43.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Young Goodmam Brown", The Story
and Its Writer, 4th ed. Ed.
Ann Charters.
Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1995, 595-604.
Shear, Walter. "Cultural Fate and Social Freedom in
Three American Short Stories",
Studies in Short
Fiction, Newberry, S.C., 1992 Fall,
29:4, 543-549.
Tritt, Michael. "Young Goodman Brown and the Psychology
of Projection", Studies in
Short Fiction, Newberry,
S.C., 1986 Winter, 23:1, 113-117.
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