Evil In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

Hawthorne in essence, portrayed Goodman as proof of the nature of evil in man by showing how easily even a young dedicated Puritan can easily be influenced by a complete stranger. This stranger was symbolically the Devil among men in this text. Hawthorne begins introducing the Devil immediately as trying to sway Goodman to follow him on a long journey. By leaving his wife, Faith to begin the journey, Goodman Brown was symbolically leaving his faith in God and entering a forsaken ground by following the Devil. The fact that Goodman Brown left with no regard for his wife Faith’s warning, symbolized the lack of regard for his own faith in God and his fellow human race. This simple disregard that Goodman Brown showed was evidence of the easily persuaded ability of man to choose sin over good.

In the short story “Young Goodman Brown,” a good and proud Puritan man; Goodman Brown, encounters a devil that causes him to become aware of the town he lives in. Goodman Brown believes that a meeting with the Devil cannot change his faith in religion. He desires to find more about his inner domains, but later finds out how hypocritical his town is. He then comes to realization that man is imperfect and defect. Goodman Brown later dies a sore death from the insight of his journey in the forest. In “Young Goodman Brown” Nathaniel Hawthorne uses imagery, symbolism, and allegory throughout the story to question the faith of man. The narrator uses dark and light imagery, people and names to illustrate the irony.

In Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” although the decision to visit the devil was not one Goodman Brown following the crowd, he soon realized he had not been the only one tempted to visit the devil. Actually upon his meeting the devil, he realized that he did not want to continue his journey and wanted to return back home to his wife, Faith, but soon realized many of the townspeople were companions with satan. The themes of “Young Goodman Brown” are that religion or religious actions do not make someone righteous and although we have an appeal to live right, there is a small desire to try the “dark side”. Goodman Brown knew right from wrong growing up in the Puritan community, he also had individuals who would teach him the doctrine of his religion; however just like many people, Goodman Brown had to see what it would be like to travel into the wilderness and visit the devil. While Goodman Brown was on his way he begin to hear familiar voices and see familiar people—those who have taught him the “right” way of living. Of course since the wilderness was no place for a saint to be Goodman Brown would hide so that the others could not view him of being in error of the Christian faith. This is how the theme religion

Many events led up to him losing his faith and being consumed with self-doubt, but the one that finally pushed Goodman Brown over the edge to call onto the devil was when he could not find his wife Faith. The line “‘But where is Faith?’ thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his heart, he trembled.” shows

Young Goodman Brown is the stereotypical Puritan man who has been recently married, and is starting his life. His young wife, Faith, is representative of his literal Christian faith. He mentions near the beginning of the story that after this one night he’ll “cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.” This is reminiscent of, I’m sure, every Christian’s desperate prayer that “after this one last time, I’ll quit for good, I promise.” Once Faith has been corrupted, Brown gives up. Once his Christian faith was found to be hollow, empty, and void of meaning, he has no reason left.

The story of Young Goodman Brown is one that works on two very different levels. On it 's surface, the story is nothing more than about a man who experiences a quite literally hellish event. When looked at deeper, the story is a much deeper meaning of the importance of faith, and how easily a person can be made or broken by it.

In "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne analyzes the Puritans’ consciousness and the hidden wickedness of their nature. He takes a naïve Puritan man and takes him on a journey into the dark forest to meet an old man whom we presume, is the devil. As the naïve Puritan embarks on his journey, his wife "Faith" kisses him good bye. The Puritan has an overwhelming feeling of guilt as he is entering the forest to meet with the Devil. He realized what he is doing was forbidden and none of his forefathers or fellow Puritans would ever commit such a sin. During his meeting with the Devil his naïveté dissolves. He sees Deacon Gookin, his old catechism teacher, and other upstanding members

When it comes to the topic of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown, most of us will readily agree that duplicity is a major theme in the piece, or the idea of different versions of reality. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of whether Hawthorne is implying that man is inherently evil. Whereas some are convinced that Young Goodman Brown was good until tainted by the Devil, others maintain that he was evil from the beginning and was completely aware of the evil he was indulging in. My personal view, however, is that Young Goodman Brown was inherently evil, but it did not come to light until the Devil began to influence Brown. This can be seen through the use of symbolism, biblical allusions, and the development of the main characters. While the Devil may have revealed that Young Goodman Brown was not as innocent and pious as he appeared, Brown was willingly indulging in sin and was inherently evil.

In "Young Goodman Brown" Goodman Brown is a Puritan husband who lets his individualistic impulses lead him into a personal encounter with the devil himself. Goodman Brown:  1.  According to Levy, he “is Everyman.  The bargain he has struck with Satan is the universal one . . . . Initially, he is a naive and immature young man who fails to understand the gravity of the step he has taken . . . [which is] succeeded by a presumably adult determination to resist his own evil impulses” (117).  2.  Fogle writes that he is “a naive young man who accepts both society in general and his fellow men as individuals at their own valuation, [who] is in one terrible night confronted with the vision of human evil . . . ” (15).

Brown believes that his wife should be excluded from the meeting so she will remain pure, yet somehow believes that his presence is mandatory and gives no thought to his own purity. He believes that Faith's immediate acceptance into heaven will pull him along with her, regardless of his sinful actions. Brown's nervousness about his journey shows that he is conscious of the risks, yet he refuses the possibility of remaining home because he believes in his own ability to resist corruption, even if he does not believe in Faith's. Brown's willingness to make an exception for his own actions while refusing the same exception for Faith is one of Hawthorne's first scornful examples of hypocrisy. Similarly, Hawthorne highlights the hypocritical juxtaposition of Brown's actions during and after the ritual. When Brown discovers Faith's pink hair ribbon and realizes the Devil has taken her, he is terrified and continuously searches for her as the Devil speaks. However, upon finding her and waking up from his dream, he treats her differently because of her attendance: "Often, awaking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down

This loneliness comes only after he is far away from his Faith and God and traveling deeper into the darkness of the forest, only “assisted by the [evil], uncertain [false] light” (2187). Young Goodman Brown overcomes his loneliness when he meets an older traveler who tells him that even Brown’s own family has come to the woods and shows him other supposed Christians who are in the woods on this night, too. Deception, something that evil uses to try to lure all people into its darkness, begins to slowly take hold of Goodman Brown when he sees other people he admires and looks up to in the woods, such as Goody Cloyse, towns-people (both good and evil), and even Deacon Gookin and the minister. Goodman Brown wants to fight against the evil images that he is enclosing him in the woods and he even calls out to his Faith, which represents not only his wife but his own faith in goodness and God, but his cries are “drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away” (2191). Finally, evil wins over Goodman Brown when he cries that his “Faith is gone,” meaning his relationship with his pure, good wife and his relationship with his pure, good God, when he sees Faith’s pink

In "Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne makes the reader believe that Goodman Brown has learned the truth about the world and how evil it really is. In the story, the accounts of Goodman Brown let you believe that he has truly seen the evil in the world and knows what lurks behind everybody masks. He is displayed losing his faith in God. Although Goodman Brown thought his family, town, and wife were good people, he fell for the devil's evil tricks in believing that his family was not as it seemed and gave into sin. The character Young Goodman Brown written by Nathaniel Hawthorne finds many issues of evil concerning the town's people in which he lives, about himself, and the reality behind the evil. Throughout “Young Goodman Brown,” the main character

He heard a scream and a pink ribbon fell down from the sky. Goodman Brown cried “My Faith is gone!” (9) Which we can take as he thought his wife was gone and the fact that he had lost his faith in God. Which is how I and most critics interpret that, however, Connolly states that “I should like to examine the story once more to show that Young Goodman Brown did not lose his faith at all. In fact, not only did he retain his faith, but during his horrible experience he actually discovered the full and frightening significance of his faith.” The story does say that his faith survives him, but I took that as pertaining to his

Goodman Brown accepts what he sees as to be true and lives a bitter cold life until death, even though the things he saw could have just been hallucinations. Young Goodman Brown's loss of innocence is the result of his

Young Goodman Brown was a pure Christian that believed in everything good in God. Until, he went to the forest and spoke with the devil which changed his life forever. That meant that Goodman’s faith was weak and anything could’ve changed it. After his experience with the devil, his life was nothing but dark. He was never happy and didn’t trust anybody because he thought everyone was