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Young Goodman Brown: Literary Interpretation
“Evil is the nature of mankind.” This is the underlying theme in Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown.” The main character, Goodman Brown, is struggling with evil, and the existence of evil within himself. His unabashed pride will not allow him to acknowledge that evil is part of human nature. He is curious about evil, and sets off on a journey to discover what it is and the nature of it. Along the way he discovers that everybody he knows, has some evil inside of them, even the people he thought to be “good Christians.” Instead of coming to the conclusion that evil must be part of human nature, he looks upon the Christians as hypocrites, but Hawthorne’s intent of this story is to show that Christians are seeking guidance from God to help them contain the evil and sin that reside in themselves. Another of his faults is he can only see good and evil in black and white. To him, things are either evil, or they are good, but they can’t be both. This conclusion leads to his loss of faith in mankind, and thus he thinks everyone around him is evil. Goodman Brown’s obsession with denying evil, leads him to his own dark and dreary demise.
The tone of the first episode is very dramatic and filled with sorrow and anticipation. The wind is blowing through Faith’s hair as she is pleading for her dear husband not to leave her. It is of no coincidence that his wife is named Faith. She represents his Faith in God and Christianity. It is clear when Goodman Brown leaves his wife behind, he is also abandoning his Faith. He knows that he is wrong in abandoning his wife and Faith, but there is some force that is drawing him into the forest, and he cannot help it. It is something he must do. Pride, which is one of Goodman Brown’s flaws, and ultimately leads to his destruction, is what allows him to continue his journey. He feels that he can go into the evil and sinful forest, and return and “cling to her [Faith] skirts and follow her to heaven.”
After he leaves his wife behind, the atmosphere becomes dark and gloomy. The path into the forest he takes is dark and narrow and closes behind him, foreshadowing of what evil lies ahead and suggesting this journey was a bad decision. The woods represent man’s fall from grace, as they do in Dante’s Inferno. He seems frightened and weary of his surroundings in this scene, and just as he says that the devil himself could be right next to him, the old man appears. Goodman Brown hasn’t realized yet that this old man is the devil himself. It is obvious this man has supernatural powers because of the fact that he made it from Boston to Salem in less than fifteen minutes, something impossible for a mortal man to do on foot. The devil is described by comparing him to [next page]