Deceiving Theme In Young Goodman Brown

Young Goodman Brown is a work teeming with subtext and unspoken meaning. On the surface, the story is a simple one, of a man having an apparent dream about a run-in with the Devil and becoming bitter towards all he knows. However, under the surface is social commentary on the state of humanity, the fickleness of faith, and the overarching theme that what you see may not be what is actually there. The theme that appearances are deceiving is supported by Hawthorne’s use of symbolism, characterization, and setting. The theme that what you see may not be reality is supported by the author’s symbolism in Faith, the village people, and the traveler’s staff. Faith may be the most obvious, symbolizing Goodman Brown’s godliness and, of course, faith.
His wife was his assurance that people could be good, and finding that she was not as holy and moral as he thought finally destroyed his belief in humanity. Along these same lines are the symbols represented in the townspeople, who are the world in itself and all the facades that are put up to please others. Such fallaciousness is common in restricted societies such as the Puritan’s, where predestination, or the belief that it has already been chosen who is going to Heaven, was foundational. Having a pious and relatively spotless public image was essential, or else you risk becoming a social outcast. However, this outward falsity is only revealed to Brown at the Devil’s meeting, where he sees “grave, reputable, and pious people” that he had previously thought were going to Heaven,
Goodman Brown is at first portrayed as an upstanding Christian man, if a bit too curious for his own good, but his true nature is revealed when there is nobody else left to support his faith. Brown knows that going on this journey is likely to leave him changed, and though he does give some protest after seeing Goody Cloyse, proclaiming that “[n]ot another step will [he] budge” and sitting on a tree root, he eventually is pushed past what near limit he had, and changed irrevocably (4). The man’s so tightly-held belief is not very strong at all once the buffer of those around him is removed, and the reader sees that he used them as proof that humanity was good. However, even if the conviction was not very strong, it made up a substantial part of his moral compass, and having it destroyed leaves his view on everything changed for the worse, and he himself mutated into something unrecognizable. The traveler who contributes to Brown’s change is also characterized in a way that supports the theme in that he is not outwardly threatening, but is quite literally Satan. He is directly described as “simply clad” and “simple in manner”, which inspires a picture of a kindly old gentleman who just wants to help this younger man through the woods (2). However, under the small town simple man persona is the