English 1302

Brittany Brewster

Comp II

O’Connell

Paper #4

Language/Tone

TITLE

        “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a story held in the seventeenth century in the Salem villages of Massachusetts. Young Goodman Brown is saying goodbye to his wife, Faith, and setting out into the forest to observe an evil ceremony. In the forest, he meets up with a man who seems to be expecting his appearance and carries a walking stick resembling a snake, which seems to move in the manner of a serpent. As the two men continue their travels into the woods, Goodman Brown shows disapproval and objection in carrying on with the trip, as he desires to return back to Faith in the village. Determined to not travel any further than his feet have already taken him, Brown decides to sit down by some trees, while his partner continues onward into the woods. Sitting alone, Goodman Brown begins to see citizens passing by on their way to the meeting and he begins to hear voices, one sounding identical to Faith’s voice. Certain to of heard his wife’s voice, Goodman Brown grabs the staff, hurrying towards the ceremony. Being dragged by the dark figures leading the ceremony, he is united with his wife as she is revealed from underneath the cloak that was one hiding her. Before there is time to tell Faith to resist the devil, Brown suddenly finds himself alone in the forest. Unsure if the encounter in the forest was a dream, Goodman Brown is changed as he lives the remainder of his life in gloom and fear. This leads to the central idea that possessing a strong faith can be infected by evil and lead to outright hopelessness and cynicism.

        This is clearly shown throughout the story as Goodman Brown’s faith is affected immediately after entering the forest. Towards the beginning of his travels, he continuously wants to turn around as he says, “we have been a race of honest men and good Christians.” While Goodman Brown chose to go and experience the ceremony, he reassures himself as well as his travel companion of his families’ innocence and good faith. As he proceeds further into the forest, he stumbles across his wife’s pink ribbon, which weakens his faith as he “caught hold of a tree, for support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint and over burthened with the sickness of his heart.” With the feeling that his wife as been corrupted by the evil, his faith weakens even more as he sees the mass of people from his town he thought he knew arriving at the ceremony. Town members he once recognized as respected and true to their faith, were now viewed as sinners, describing them as “A grave and dark –clad company.” Goodman Brown’s faith is ultimately transformed by the end of this story, as he believes there is no good left in the world, but only evil, as he lives the rest of his life in a state of fear and gloom until his death.