Goodman Brown

Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown", tells the tale of a young and faithful Puritan who becomes engulfed in the darkness of his heart as he ventures into the forest, or the devil's lair itself. The darkness that overcomes this faithful Puritan, Goodman Brown, is marked by his departure from his wife Faith, as he begins an unknown journey of his into the forest, and ultimately into eternal solitude. It is Goodman Brown's own foolishness and the result of his weak mind and heart that puts him on this path to despair. Had he been true and loyal to his Faith, he would have been able to overcome his darker conscious.

"He is conscious of the dangers of the mission but is impelled onward by the thoughts of evil which hold him fascinated until it is too late to turn back to his wife and so to faith" (Walsh, p.332). I agree with Thomas F. Walsh's statement indicating Goodman Brown's awareness of the dangers of the forest he himself chose to explore. Goodman Brown chose to enter the devil's lair and venture onward deeper into the darkness, away from his wife Faith, and symbolically, from faith itself. Brown's fascination with the evil that dwells in the forest comes from his own dark desires to see it with his own eyes. Brown knew his journey was unholy and despite his wife's plea for him to stay and the troublesome he acknowledge on her face as an omen, he continues on into the forest feeling he is too powerful to be overcome by the devil. He makes the mistake of underestimating both the evil of the forest and his darker conscious. He tries to become an observer who can submerge into evil with the protection of some holy barrier and return untainted. "With this excellent resolve for the future , Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose" (Hawthorne, p. 25).

Goodman Brown's curiosity for exploring evil eventually takes him far into the depths of the forest until it becomes too late for him to return back, and as he goes on further, his religious faith and confidence that he once held on to begins to disappear. "Goodman Brown, having sinned himself or at least realizing his own potentiality for sin, makes the mistake of identifying himself, as the resemblance of three generations of Browns to the devil shows, with his ancestors in a sort of heredity of sin" (Walsh, p. 335). Brown's family history of sin and resemblance of appearances to the devil finally takes hold of him after he finds the pink ribbon belonging to his wife Faith. He goes into a hysteria, and the evil of the forest along with his inability to separate himself with the devils from his family history , push him further into the core of the forest where he encounters the witch assembly, He becomes delirium after thinking he lost his Faith and he allows the darkness of his heart to come out by choosing to accept that sin was bore from within him. During his hysteria, he comments, "let us hear which will laugh loudest, think not to frighten me with your deviltry" (Hawthorne, p. 30). He challenges the devil but is too weak to fight, and so succumbs to the