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Evil In Young Goodman Brown

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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…show more content…
He enters the woods one evening, even though Puritans believed that the woods harbored the Devil, with "evil purpose." The Devil plays with Young Goodman Brown’s mind by appearing as an old man—who looks a great deal like Brown. Throughout the whole errand, the old man kept urging Goodman Brown to take his snake-like staff to use as a walking stick, “‘...here is my staff, if you will’” (Hawthorne 4). The staff is symbolic for an evil guide because the Devil wants Goodman Brown to obtain and sacrifice himself to sin. After multiple rejections, the wicked one tried throwing the staff to Goodman Brown, hoping his reflexes would automatically catch the staff. As they walk and talk, Brown realizes that his ancestors were in league with the Devil for generations. Brown is surprised because this shows that his family has worked with the evil one before. Then, the Devil tells Brown that many people know and associate with him assuming that in a broad sense, these people sin—that is their association with the Devil. The last temptation thrown at Goodman Brown was that the Devil decided to use Faith against him. As Richard L. Fogle goes on to explain, “A pink ribbon, which he remembers having seen in his wife’s hair, comes fluttering down into his grasp” (451). At this exact moment, Young Goodman Brown realizes that his Faith is gone. Maddened with despair, he laughs loud and long and then, Goodman Brown grasp the staff and set forth again, at such a rate that he seemed to fly along the forest path rather than to walk or run. His swift movements imply that he is flying like a witch on a broom. Young Goodman Brown’s soul is taken and left him sinful and
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