As children, we are curious beings, exploring and questioning the world around us. In the eyes of the young and innocent, the world may seem to be a nurturing, joyful place where there is little cruelty, and no one is capable of committing wrongdoing. Sadly, as we gradually become more aware of the darker side of human nature, the benevolent world we previously imagined changes and we are able to accept that as people, we are imperfect, and we all have the potential to commit terrible deeds. Nevertheless, some may continue to age without understanding the deep imperfections of people, and therefore if they are faced with it all at once, they may struggle to accept that their limited comprehension of man’s sinfulness did not allow them to perceive the erroneous actions of ordinary folk. This is depicted in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Young Goodman Brown”, which describes a man’s nighttime journey through an unfamiliar forest. Envisioning that his religious faith will protect him from the unknown, Goodman Brown seeks to enter the woods to meet a stranger and return unchanged, setting aside his wife’s pleas for him to stay home and his personal apprehension to the task. However, his experience greatly unsettles him: he is forced to question his own preconceptions about the virtue of his Puritan community, as well as the goodness of his paternal ancestors. Initially denying the sins that his family and community members have committed, Goodman Brown is horrified to discover the deep hypocrisy of his supposedly holy society, and as a result his faith is irreparably shaken. He thus returns to his village disenchanted by its inhabitants, unable to see them as anything but insincere and tainted by sin. For the rest of his life, he remains an embittered soul, incapable of accepting that the morality of his commune was not as pure and perfect as he had previously imagined. Overall, Hawthorne demonstrates that one’s lack of imagination can blind them to the dark complexities of human nature. When confronted by humanity’s ability to do evil, they may retreat into desolation and sorrow, lamenting the loss of the world they believed they knew and thus sacrificing their potential to live out a positive future.
Initially, an individual may be oblivious to the fact that no matter how faultless their peers may appear, they are still fully capable of performing depraved acts, and will find themselves unable to believe that they are flawed. As Goodman Brown walks alongside a stranger in the forest, his companion notes that Goodman’s grandfather and father were “[his] good friends” (pg. 2) and that they were both decent men, despite them abusing a Quaker woman in the town of Salem and setting fire to a Native American village, respectively. Goodman Brown dismisses the stranger’s statements, presuming that they “never spoke of these matters” (pg. 2) and insisting that his forefathers were “honest men and good Christians” (pg. 2), unable to fathom that these claims of their sinful behaviour are true. When the pair of travellers stumble across Goody Cloyse, an elderly woman associated with the Church, Goodman Brown overhears a conversation she has with the stranger as he hides in the bush, so as to avoid embarrassment at being seen in the woods so late at night. He is shocked as they discuss her lost broomstick and potion recipes, implying that she is a witch, and thus a devout worshipper of the Devil. Goodman Brown, baffled by what he has heard, exclaims that “[Goody Cloyse] taught him [his] catechism” (pg. 4) and struggles to accept that the seemingly pious woman practices the opposite of what she preaches. Stunned by this new information, Goodman Brown nevertheless remains unimaginative in his comprehension of others’ sins, and clings to his frail belief that there are others in his community who are not marred by evil.
However, even if the individual continues to believe in the goodness of those around them, they will only encounter more of the corrupted side of humanity, and will be forced to acknowledge that perhaps the people they believed they understood were not as innocent as they first appeared. In spite of his initial determination to retain his faith, Goodman Brown fails to do so. As he continues on through the forest, he becomes further disillusioned in his religious beliefs when he hears the voice of his wife Faith, lamenting as she travels through the wood alongside the voices of the other townspeople. When he cries out for her, one of the pink ribbons she wears floats down from the sky, signifying that she has shed her perceived innocence and purity for the sinful nature he has heard and seen others exhibit. This deeply shakes Goodman Brown, and he exclaims that “there is no good on earth” (pg. 6) and that “to [the devil, the] world is given” (pg. 6), believing that if Faith – someone he imagined to be unconditionally virtuous – is impure, the world must be lost to the Devil’s clutches. Soon after, when he finds himself in a forest clearing set ablaze by the townspeople as part of a sinister ritual, he sees the many members of his Puritan community whom he has known to be respectable mixed in with the outcasts and wrongdoers of society. Noting that “the good [do not recoil] from the wicked, nor [are] the sinners abashed by the saints” (pg. 7), Goodman Brown sees this as an upheaval of the virtues of his village: since the community values morality and reputation so dearly, he sees this is a display of blatant hypocrisy as the villagers, regardless of their social status, all stand together without any qualms regarding the sins each of them may have committed. Forced to take part in the nightmarish ritual, Goodman Brown is unable to deny that his former belief in the purity of humanity was unfounded, and suddenly finds himself alone in the woods, left with a crippled faith and a new understanding of the corruption of his fellow Puritans.
Consequently, the individual may feel threatened by their realization of humanity’s fallibility, and withdraw from society as a result, mourning their failure to imagine what wickedness people can commit and losing the possibility of a promising future. Goodman Brown subsequently returns to his village, finding that it is as if nothing has happened and all is normal. Now blinded to the more benevolent side of human nature after his experience in the forest, he begins a more resentful and pessimistic approach to life, facing his future with nothing but misery and doubt. Finding that he can no longer look at his society members as truly virtuous, he hears only “[anthems] of sin” (pg. 9) during the church services he attends, and he grows distant from his wife and family. Wasting his life away as an embittered soul, he is buried by his relatives “[without a] hopeful verse on his tombstone” (pg. 9). Due to his disenchantment with his community and his faith, Goodman Brown’s newfound outlook on the people around him changes his future into a hopeless picture of despair, because his perception of people’s unlimited goodness was proven to be wrong, and he dies having lived a life of deep sorrow and scorn of the virtue of others.
Overall, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” illustrates how one’s naivete about the darker nature of humanity can throw them into anguish and loneliness when they are compelled to recognize it, leaving them to contemplate their flawed assumption of people’s constant goodness and face a different future than the one they may have imagined. Goodman Brown initially possesses a strong faith and belief in the virtue of the people around him as well as in the honor of his paternal ancestors, but discovers that they were and are not as perfect as he presumed, and he shrinks away from the society that he was once wholly a part of, struggling to cope with his former inability to understand the flaws of humanity. In the end, as we grow and mature, it becomes clear that we as people will never be perfect, but that there is still as much beauty and goodness in human nature as there is destruction and depravity. So long as this is realized, it is possible for us to embrace whatever lies ahead in life, and we may live full lives without feeling shame and guilt when we commit mistakes.