26 pages • 52 minutes read
Nathaniel HawthorneYoung Goodman Brown
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1835A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Questioning and Testing One’s Faith
A prominent theme in “Young Goodman Brown” is that of questioning and testing one’s faith. Hawthorne’s story suggests that doubting one’s faith—or questioning it—has catastrophic consequences. While Goodman Brown appears to be perfectly happy and content with his faith (both his wife and his beliefs), he still willingly chooses to enter the wilderness at night. He knows Faith is not eager to see him leave, but he tells her, “say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee” (1). His conviction is supported by his belief that prayer will protect his Faith from harm. He eases his own uncertainty but resolving to never again leave Faith’s side after returning from his evening errand.
This resolution is tested throughout the story. Brown is curious about what awaits him in the forest; however, when he meets the elder traveler, he becomes skeptical of the journey. He says, “Faith kept me back awhile” (2), and on several occasions he stops, acknowledging that his faith will not approve of him being on the journey and so he must turn back. Again and again, Brown’s conviction is swayed. The traveler easily convinces him that the journey is harmless because everyone Brown respects is traveling the same path.
When Brown suspects that his Faith has given herself to the devil, he investigates further by journeying to the celebration in the clearing. There, Brown is further coerced by figures who resemble his family and respected townspeople to step forward to be converted; he is also brought face-to-face with a shrouded figure who turns out to be his wife, Faith. Upon seeing Faith brought before the devil, Brown calls out for her to resist. The narrator asserts that Brown does not know whether Faith resisted and escaped.
The loss of Brown’s faith begins when he realizes that everyone he respects harbors evil. When he realizes that even his Faith is given to the devil, he realizes he cannot resist such evil by himself.
Self-Identity Through the Loss of Innocence
Literature focused on the theme of loss of innocence typically depicts an adolescent character who experiences lead to an awareness or understanding of the hardships in life. While Brown is not an adolescent, he is a naïve, impressionable young man who experiences the darkness of humanity in its truest form. Not only does Brown become aware of the hidden evil at the core of his religious beliefs and the people who represent it, but he also learns about the evil within himself. He says, “There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! for to thee is this world given” (6). Upon realizing that Faith has been sacrificed to the devil, Brown gives up and confirms his belief that there is no good on earth. After all, his Faith symbolizes his faith, and the loss of one jeopardizes the other. This loss is devastating for Brown, who will never be the same naïve young man again. His awareness of his community’s hypocrisy, and his own wife’s involvement, stains his life with enduring misery.
That the elder traveler takes the appearance of Brown and his family members suggests that Brown is also tainted, as he sees himself in the devil. On the journey, he is subtly reminded that he comes from a lineage of evildoers, which challenges his long-held notion that his family was “honest” and “good,” based in “prayer, and good works” (2-3). Brown is vulnerable and easily swayed. Once he, his beliefs, and his community are identified as evil, he is ruined.
Fear of the Wilderness
The wilderness is a significant symbol in “Young Goodman Brown,” and the fear of what it harbors is a prevalent theme. Hawthorne characterizes the forest as a gloomy, evil place from the outset of Brown’s journey: The trees are “the gloomiest,” the path “creeps,” and the darkness is “lonely” and obscures untold potential horrors. The narrator observes that “the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead” (1). Brown’s unease is exacerbated by this sense of impending doom. He says to himself, “There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree […] What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!” (1).
The wilderness’s role in this story stems from the early Puritan belief that New England’s forested areas harbored the unknown, including everything from howling beasts to yelling tribes to gatherings of witches. Since the forest was inhabited by indigenous groups, whom Puritans believed were agents of the devil, it stood to reason that the wilderness would be a place for the devil and his followers. Furthermore, the wilderness is violent and represents the loss of home. William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, written in the early to mid-1600s, is an excellent example of Puritan accounts of their newfound home in the wilderness.
Puritanism relied on literal translations of the Bible, and many biblical teachings cast the wilderness as a place inhabited by evil and physical hardship. The Israelites in the Book of Exodus, for example, were sent to wander the harsh wilderness for 40 years because of their trust in man over God. In one biblical passage, readers are instructed to
clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; And let the rough ground become a plain, And the rugged terrain a broad valley (Isaiah 40:3-5).
Another passage suggests that “the land is the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness” (Joel 2:3). The wilderness thus represents a place of hostility that obstructs any progress. In Hawthorne’s story, the wilderness is also corrosive, eroding the façade that masks the community’s hypocrisy as well as Brown’s own religious faith.
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