Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel

¶ … Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Specifically it will discuss my feelings about what Hawthorne is writing about in the story. "Young Goodman Brown" tells the story of a young man, newly married, who travels through a dark forest one night, and meets the devil. He also sees people from his village meeting with the devil, including his wife. This experience frightens and changes him so much, that he never recovers, and he dies a bitter and angry old man.

It is never quite clear in this story whether Goodman Brown dreamt his story of meeting the devil, or it really happened. Hawthorne seems to say that it was a dream near the end of the story, when he writes, "A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become, from the night of that fearful dream" (Hawthorne 73). It really seems that it would be a dream, since it seems doubtful that the entire village (except Brown) would consort with the devil. In addition, the people still tolerated Brown, even if he could not tolerate them, so it seems as if the author was saying that they were more "Christian" than the pious Brown, and so, his experience was a dream. If that is the case, then his reaction to what he thought he saw is even sadder, because he allows it to color and ruin his entire life.

At the beginning of the story, Brown seems young and fairly carefree, and it is clear he loves his wife very much. However, when he returns from the forest, he shuns her, and even though they remain married and raise a family, he is always gloomy and distrustful. It does not make sense that he would have children with a woman he thought worshipped the devil, and it does not seem that he really loved her, because if he had truly loved her, he would have known her, and known that she was a good woman who would not consort with the devil. He believed his dream more than he believed in his wife, and that is wrong.

There is another aspect of the story that does not make sense, either. When Brown meets the traveler in the woods, he says they have an uncommon resemblance, and the old woman refers to him as Brown's grandfather. If this is true, then that would mean Brown is the grandson of the devil himself, and he would not be afraid or angry at the devil, he would embrace him. Of course, since Brown turns into such an unhappy and strange old man, it could be said that he did indeed fulfill the prophecy, and he was the devil, while those around him were not. One literary critic puts it a little bit differently. He writes, "Young Goodman Brown experiences in the Salem woods his other self, his inner demon" (Moores). Another critic agrees, and writes, "Hawthorne removes the mask of piety from his characters to show that the real devil is the one lurking within each individual" (Maus 76). Young Goodman Brown becomes then, what he is most afraid of, and that is the true sadness of the story, and it seems like that is the real message Hawthorne was trying to get across to his readers. We all have evil inside us, but we can choose whether to let that evil out or not.