SHORT STORY:
Young Goodman Brown
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Plot summary:
The story begins at dusk in
Salem, Massachusetts, as young Goodman Brown leaves Faith, his wife of three
months, for an unknown errand in the forest. Faith pleads with her husband to
stay with her but he insists the journey into the forest must be completed that
night. In the forest he meets a man, dressed in a similar manner to himself and
bearing a resemblance to himself. The man carries a black serpent-shaped staff.
The two encounter Mistress Cloyse in the woods who complains about the need to
walk and, evidently friendly with the stranger, accepts his snake staff and
flies away to her destination.
Other townspeople inhabit the
woods that night, traveling in the same direction as Goodman Brown. When he
hears his wife's voice in the trees, he calls out to his Faith, but is not
answered. He then seems to fly through the forest, using a maple staff the
stranger fashioned for him, arriving at a clearing at midnight to find all the
townspeople assembled. At the ceremony (which may be a witches' sabbath)
carried out at a flame-lit rocky altar, the newest converts are brought
forth—Goodman Brown and Faith. They are the only two of the townspeople not yet
initiated to the forest rite. Goodman Brown calls to heaven to resist and
instantly the scene vanishes.
Arriving back at his home in
Salem the next morning, Goodman Brown is uncertain whether the previous night's
events were real or a dream, but he is deeply shaken, with the belief he lived
in a Christian community distorted. He loses his faith in his wife, along with
all of humanity. He lives his life an embittered and suspicious cynic, wary of
everyone around him. Hawthorne concludes the story by writing: "And when
he had lived long, and was borne to his grave...they carved no hopeful verse
upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom."
CRITICISM
CRITICISM
Young
Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne chronicles the disturbing dream of a
young Puritan man in Salem. In the dream, Goodman Brown comes face to face with
evil and is forced to examine the nature of evil in man. He is disgusted by the
evil he encounters, not realizing his own involvement. The meaning of the text
lies in discovering the meaning of Goodman Brown's encounter in the woods.
Goodman
Brown shows both innocence and corruptibility as he vacillates between
believing in the inherent goodness of the people around him and believing that
the devil has taken over the minds of all the people he loves. Finally, he
believes that Faith is pure and good, until the devil reveals at the ceremony
that Faith, too, is corruptible. This vacillation reveals Goodman Brown’s lack
of true religion—his belief is easy to shake—as well as of the good and evil
sides of human nature.Hawthorne suggests that behind the public face of
godliness, the Puritans’ actions were not always Christian.
Commonly
understood themes in Young Goodman Brown have included the pervasiveness and
secrecy of sin and evil alive within all people, and the hypocrisy of
Puritanism. The most obvious reading is that Brown, an innocent and naive
fellow, is ruined after finding hypocrisy in his religious faith (embodied in
his wife, Faith). His wife, as was often the case in Puritan New England, was
seen as a representation of the domestic sphere and a pure being untainted by
the evils of the world, so pure that she might even save her husband. Goodman
Brown puts her on a pedestal, as he does his religion, but her appearance in
the forest leaves him without hope for redemption and his eventual estrangement
from her signals his true estrangement from God.
In many
ways, much of this tale is allegorical in nature, partly because of the
mutability of all of the symbols. If this were an allegory it could be
summarized by stating that this is one man’s realization that he is surrounded
by opposing forces without ever knowing which of them are good or which are
evil. Faith (in both senses of the word) is the light in the story, the only
way one can be saved, yet by walking into the forest (which is a symbol for
that which is dark and mysterious) with a man who literally clings to the
serpent (an allegorical image for the Devil or evil incarnate) Goodman is
leaving behind his Faith and asking for the truth about who (or what) is good
or evil.
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