“Young Goodman Brown”– Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

Summary

Young Goodman Brown tells the story of a young Puritan man who ventures into the forest and encounters a series of shocking revelations about the evil nature of his community and the people he once trusted. Along the way, he meets the Devil and witnesses a satanic ritual, which causes him to lose his faith in both God and humanity. He returns to Salem a changed man, filled with despair and distrust, ultimately dying in a state of spiritual and emotional isolation.

 

Characters:

Young Goodman Brown

Faith

The Old Man

Goody Cloyse

Deacon Gookin

 

Plot Elements:

Exposition – The events take place in Salem Village, where Young Goodman Brown says goodbye to his wife, Faith, before heading into the forest. He assures her that he will not be gone long, but Faith remains apprehensive, sensing evil in the air. Goodman Brown comforts her, but his trip into darkness diminishes the light of his mundane life.

 

Rising Action – The rising action begins, engaging Goodman Brown deeper into the bushes, horrible old man (the Devil) who carries a serpent-headed staff. The old man insinuates that Goodman Brown's forbears were also in league with the Devil. As Brown advanced with him into the gloomy woods, he began to hear voices and see important people in his community and theirs engaged in dark rituals, whose actions served to buttress, in contradistinction, his now fading belief in the goodness of the people among whom he lived.

 

Climax – Goodman Brown experiences the climax when he reaches a dark and eerie clearing where he witnesses a ceremony involving the townspeople and his wife, Faith, who has just been unceremoniously inducted into the Satanic Nihilism. The image of Faith, considered pure and innocent, betrays him completely so that he screams for her to resist the temptation; however, it seems she has embraced the darkness.

 

Resolution – Goodman Brown finds himself completely engulfed by trauma. He wakes up in the forest-the furthermost place of his vision- and he is never sure whether what he has seen is a dream or real. However, on his own, he returns to Salem, a broken man. This guilt eats him for the remainder of his life, a life strived in disingenuousness, believing no one is good and they all are wicked in their hidden way. Once this belief was reinforced, Goodman Brown found it hard to mend his ties and relations, right down to Faith; after all was said and done, they find him leading a secluded life and becoming incredibly embittered, having borrowed proof to shine his demeanor for interminable suffering.

 

Analysis

This story goes very deep into the depths of faith—both religious and personal—and the loss of innocence. Good man Brown's journey is divided into hypocritical, temptative, and dualistic aspects of humanity. Goodman Brown is a man of strong faith and idealism. But he really loses innocence as he goes into the forest, and he finds out that just like everybody else, none in the world- even those closest to him- are as good as they make themselves seem to be.