“Young Goodman Brown” is one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s best known works often said to be a social criticism against Puritans of New England. However, the allegories and symbolism used in it are also seen to clearly depict how innocence is lost in a man as he is tempted by evil and succumbs to it.
It becomes evident even from the title that each character is in essence symbolic of an abstract idea in life, such as Goodman being an innocent man who desires to experiment with the evil in the world and his wife Faith attempting to hold him back. In the story, “Faith, as (Goodman’s) wife was aptly named,” represents exactly that, and the fact that Goodman is married to her symbolizes his longing to cling to a faith. However, in spite of her efforts to keep him with her, he departs from Faith and in doing so, from all convictions and moral values that restrained him in the past from falling to evil. The dark path in the forest that Goodman takes and penetrates further and further in itself represents how an innocent man can unknowingly fall deeper and deeper into evil without ever taking a direct part in it and a main idea conveyed by the author is how the path seems to close back behind him as he walks, as if there was at that point no turning back anymore or at least no way to get back the innocence he once had. Then, however, as he moves far enough into the darkness of the woods, he encounters a being who the reader can easily conclude is the devil himself. It is at this point, a point where the innocent human is already surrendered by evil, when he is asked to take his personal decision to take a direct role in that evil.
One of the first thing done by this new character is offer Goodman a walking staff which would represents Goodman’s complete separation from his values and a personal decision to now lean on evil forces; the fact that the staff resembled a snake shows the treachery involved in this offer and how prone he would be to being bitten and even killed by keeping this so close to his arm. The next stage involves his eyes being open to reality as Brown begins to see all the people he once admired to be respectable and exemplary Christians such as the deacon in church and his parents walking directly towards the ritual, and before turning back, catches a glimpse of his wife following the same path. At this point, as Faith is gone, his faith in anything left good in the world vanished too, and he follows her. Humans with good values and morals are often deceived by evil to great extents, but those convictions can come back in the last minutes as is the case as Goodman asks his wife to “look up to heaven and resists the evil one.” This last action makes everything else vanish and leaves him alone in the middle of the forest. The next morning, unclear to the reader if Goodman simply had a dream or a life-changing experience, the protagonist begins to see people different and becomes aware of the evil in the world.
Good people, such as the stereotypical man represented by Goodman Brown, shows how crucial it is to attain a firm set of convictions and moral values so that when temptation comes, it will not lure a good man away. However, Hawthorne also showed the importance of being aware of evil surrounding man rather than being blinded to the truth and then succumbing to evil unaware of what it really is.
