Essay: Young Goodman Brown

Goodman Brown says goodbye to his wife, Faith, and goes on a one night journey, even though his wife does not want to be left alone because she is scared. Brown goes to the dark forest where he fears the worst buts tumbles upon another man who looks like an older version of himself. This older man guides him on a journey, but Brown complains about needing rest and wanting to return home. The older man offers him his staff to walk faster but, Brown refuses to use it and still insists on going back home. He tells the old man about his God related family but, the old man tells brown tales about his own father and the importance of how he knew him and tried to convert him. At this point, Brown turns back to the village. The old man gives him a staff just in case he decided to go to the evil ceremony. He encounters a scary witch, then some devil worshippers and finally, a spooky black cloud. Next, he meets the Devil and it decides to put ideas on temptation into Brown and also convert him. The next day he cannot look at the thought of being respectful to people and can’t even look at his wife. He ends up living a life of misery. Images of darkness, symbolic representations of pink ribbons and the devil’s staff all attribute to Hawthrone’s theme of the loss of innocence.

 

“Young Goodman Brown” is a dark story that leaves you with an impression of evilness and fear by using different imagery words. The forest that Brown travels through is dark and seems unreal by his telling of the changes in the landscape. “He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind” (Hawthorne, 1). The detail and description of this quote makes the path seem unapproachable. It shows the danger brought on to him by the forest and that he cannot simply turn back around.

One symbol is Faith’s pink ribbon. Pink is associated with innocence and purity. Hawthrone brings up the ribbons several times, giving her the characteristics of youthfulness and happiness. In the forest, Brown loses his innocent faith and becomes certain that Faith has been captured by the devil himself when he saw her pink ribbon drifting down from the sky and getting caught in a tree. Brown initiates to fear and thinks that everyone he knows is a self-righteous sinner. The pink ribbons now symbolize the simple appearance of innocent faith. When he returns to Salem in the morning, he notices that Faith is still wearing her pink ribbons. “Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him that she skipped along the street and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting” (Hawthorne, 9). He questions whether or not the untouched ribbons mean that she never left Salem, and Brown’s contact in the forest was all a dream.

The second symbol in the story is the devil’s staff. The staff is from the biblical symbol of the devil as an evil demon. “But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent” (Hawthorne, 2). The Book of Genesis, someone motivates Eve to taste the fruit from the forbidden tree, disregarding God’s will and bringing with wrath Brown’s loss of innocence was consequent to humanity. When the devil tells Brown to use his staff to travel faster, Brown takes him up on the offer and is finally convicted for his weakness by losing his innocence. Besides representing Eve’s fascination, the serpent represents her interest, which eventually leads her into that fascination. Brown’s agreement to go into the forest is driven by curiosity, and so was Eve’s decision to eat the forbidden fruit. The devil’s staff makes it clear that Brown is more of a demon than human and that when he takes the staff for himself, he is on the path toward evil also.

The main theme in this story is the loss of innocence. Goodman Brown loses his innocence because of internal corruptibility, the loss of his innocence was unpreventable. Instead of being depraved by the outside force, Brown makes a peculiar choice to go into the forest and meet with the devil himself. This choice was, sure-enough, danger, and the devil only promoted Brown’s fall. “So, they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons” (Hawthorne, 1). Brown believes that Faith represents kindness and innocence. But what if her presence is a sign that she’s not so innocent after all? Brown is not positive whether the events in the night are real, but it does not matter either way. If it ends up being a dream, then the thoughts have come fully from his head, which is a fair indication of his dark side. If the events are real, Brown has then seen that everyone around him is corrupt, and he carried this realization upon himself through his curiosity.

To conclude, this short story by Hawthorne, uses the protagonist and his battles between reality and illusion of the antagonist, which is apparently the devil, to convey the theme that how this mystery can lead up to the strange ending of the story. Young Goodman Brown is left open for analysis by readers. Was Brown dreaming or did the village people he once was friends with and believed were Christian, turn to the Devil? His faith has been overcome by his experience, and he lives the rest of his life in confusion and despair.