Nathaniel Hawthorn’s 1835 short story “Young Goodman Brown” serves as a fictional illustration of the shift in emphasis on religion amongst the still developing nation of North America. One theme the story significantly touches on is the malleability of religious beliefs, which is modeled by the character of Goodman Brown and his supposedly righteous friends and family. Through Hawthorne’s precise diction, heavy symbolism, and allusion this tale manages to serve as a representation of how easily people of the Puritan faith explained away, or rather failed to explain, the merciless acts they committed.
Hawthorn opens Goodman Brown’s tale by revealing the titular characters’ affection and upholding of his wife, who wears pink ribbons in her hat, symbolizing her innocence and purity. The narrator states, “…Faith, as the wife was aptly named…” as a precursor to the preoccupation with belief the story overtakes as it progresses. Essentially, goodman Brown and his wife are pinnacles of a society that is grounded in Christianity, surrounded by friends and family who are just as faithful as they are, and whose lives function on that basis. The first occurrence of goodman Brown’s malleable relationship to his faith is when Hawthorn writes, “With this excellent resolve for the future, goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose” (387). Although the “evil purpose” is never explicitly named, goodman Brown’s willingness to overlook his beliefs and commit an “evil” act—even if it were just this once—speaks to his flimsy hold on religion, as well as serves as foreshadowing to his eventual breakaway from religion altogether.
Symbolism runs deeper within the story with the introduction of goodman Brown’s companion. He is described as dressed in “grave attire” with an uncanny resemblance to goodman Brown, and as carrying a staff “which bore the likeness of a great black snake” (Hawthorne 387-388). The use of the word “grave” immediately gives the sense that this man is dark and solemn, and therefore possibly not a good man. However, by relating his physical appearance to goodman Brown’s an automatic connection is drawn between the two, suggesting that goodman Brown’s companion is either a reflection of his darker self as well as an embodiment of what is dark in all humans. Functioning as a reflection of the evil side of goodman Brown makes it easier for this character to manipulate the main character and convince him of going through with the evil he is paranoid about. For example, on multiple occasions goodman Brown stops walking and refuses to go any further into the foreboding forest. Still, this reflection manages to convince him otherwise by telling him he has a history with the Brown family—“I helped your grandfather…when he lashed the Quaker woman…”—and then by agreeing that goodman Brown simply needs rest, subsequently offering him aid in the form of a staff (Hawthorne 388-390). The staff itself resembles a serpent, the symbol of demons in Biblical texts. Goodman brown cannot suppress the urge to use the staff when he thinks his Faith has been shaken, literally and figuratively, and it leads him further along that foreboding road (Hawthorne 392). This character functions as an embodiment of all that is dark within humans by being able to convince an entire town to commit sins and simply go on with their righteous lives as if nothing wrong was happening.
Along with the aforementioned symbols, the breakaway from religion is represented in the form of people, namely the introduction of goody Cloyse. When goodman Brown spots the lady he asks his “friend” if they could cut through the woods in case the good woman “ask whom I was consorting with, and whither I was going.” This request not only reinforces goodman Brown’s malleable beliefs, but draws on the guilt he feels to be committing a sin, a quality soon revealed to have escaped many of the other Puritan believers. Goody Cloyse was perceived as a “pious” woman by goodman Brown up until it is revealed to him, albeit subtly, that she is indeed a witch colluding with the devil, her “old friend” (Hawthorne 389). This particular image works as an indicator to both the reader and goodman Brown—who is at first confused by the scene—of the fallibility of humans, even spiritual ones. For even when goodman Brown finds out goody Cloyse’s truth and expresses shock at her deceit, he still refers to his fellow traveler as “friend” and resumes his walk with him (Hawthorne 390). It is this action that confirms to the reader that goodman Brown is no better than the goody Cloyse, nor any of the characters who are revealed to have ties with evil. Two of the mentioned are a minister and deacon, and others include Indians.
With the knowledge that the minister and deacon, “and others from Connecticut and Rhode-Island…[and] Indian powwows” know and commit acts of “deviltry” shows that appearances are not always as they seem, for even the most virtuous of people are people with demons, and secrets, and tarnished histories (Hawthorne 391). Although goodman Brown assumes he is doing his best to avoid the evils of the forest, it takes a single faith shaking moment—the moment in which his wife’s pink ribbon “fluttered lightly down through the air, and caught on the branch of a tree”—to transform him from a good man to an evil one. Not only does this symbolize Faith’s loss of innocence, but also the shift in goodman Brown’s character as he finally gives in to the temptation of his companion and his fascination with the “dark” wilderness (Hawthorne 392).
The relevancy of the details Hawthorne presents is not only to cement his reputation as one of America’s prolific Transcendentalist writers, but to explain the nature of this “miserable race.” “Now are ye undeceived!” says the devil at the climactic baptism scene. “Evil is the nature of mankind” (Hawthorne 394). And although “Young Goodman Brown” is not realistic fiction, Hawthorne skims over real world events that go hand in hand with the ultimate theme. One of those events is that of the Salem Witch Trials. Women seen as ‘other’ were used as scapegoats for any wrong doing that might have happened around town, and dozens were hanged and murdered for meager crimes they were nonetheless innocent of in the name of religion. Goody Cloyse was inspired after such a woman (Hawthorne 389). Another occurrence Hawthorne alludes is the Puritan intolerance to Quakers. Although both movements emigrated to the America’s in search of religious freedom, Puritans fought for dominance and won, hence the devil’s assurance to goodman Brown of his friendship with the Brown family, as he lead the ancestors down evil paths as well (Hawthorne 388). This draws on the legacy of Puritan’s prejudice. A third significant time in history the story alludes to is that of the Puritan’s warring with Indians. Not only does Hawthorne make mention of the aid he provided goodman Brown’s father in burning down an entire Indian village and subsequently bringing an end to Native American majority in the New World, but he explicitly states that Indians were a part of the devilish rituals in the forest (388-391). In doing this Hawthorne is discrediting the notion that Puritans were the superior people, as they lead their followers to believe. Just as goodman Brown did, some followed in the religion simply because it had been bestowed upon them. They lived in small villages in which they all were the same, and so not many questioned the authority. Goodman Brown’s realization that people pick and choose which parts of their beliefs they want to commit to desensitized him to the reality of his situation; that religion is not stable, but elastic, at least when it comes to who benefits as a result of that elasticity. In this context, only the Puritans gained. This also serves as a discredit to Puritan superiority because he is referring to the religious townspeople and the alleged ‘savages’ as on and the same; neither is better than the other when it comes to sinning.
All in all, Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” serves as a commentary on the flimsiness of people’s beliefs and the lengths they will go to in order to justify the actions they commit that do not necessarily line up with what they preach. It is through diction, symbolism, and allusion that Hawthorne is able to get this provocative message across. The story works to discredit the belief that Puritans were superior to any other by creating a character that comes to this realization through the loss of his already shaky faith and a clearer idea of the type of people he had been blindly following for most of his life. He does this by subtly referencing real world events such as the Salem Witch Trials, intolerance to Quakers, and King Philip’s War to reveal the overall theme of the text, and that is “evil is the nature of mankind” (Hawthorne 394).