Goodman Brown Good Vs Evil

At the time Nathaniel Hawthorne penned Young Goodman Brown, puritanical Christianity had a firm grapple on the spirituality of New Englanders. Their belief in a sly and deceiving Satan was just as central to their ideology as any God or Heaven. Hawthorne, himself, descends from parties known to have been active participants in the infamous Salem Witch Trials. While these early Americans sought to achieve a path of righteousness which would earn them God’s grace, and thusly, eternal paradise, it seems they also had a curiosity for more ominous even grim entertainment. Ultimately, it was good and evil, or God and The Devil which interested them, and imaginably these puritans wanted to explore the difference in the two and examine how one could
be stolen away from the climate of righteousness, and led astray into darkness, just as Young Goodman Brown was on that fateful night.
This theme of good versus evil carries itself from the initial paragraph until the very last word, as we read while Young Goodman Brown’s blessed existence becomes a forsaken one.
His wife, quite suitably named Faith, pleads with him not to journey from her -- from their puritanical home and domestic bliss, but he implores it. As he ventures from her he considers if she was made privy to his ghoulish expedition through a dream and resigns that at its completion to, “cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven” (262). He knows he is to commune with evil this night, however, and to do so, he must endeavor beyond not only the goodness and grace of his wife Faith, but beyond the safety of Salem Village and into the deep, dark
woods.
The woods, themselves, are a representation of evil to the puritans. They are seen as symbolic of barbarous primitivism, and accordingly ungodly and unholy. The woods are home to savages and beasts, and as he walks, he supposes he may happen upon a “devilish Indian…(or)…the devil himself” (262). The inherent evil of the woods also delivers an eerie and foreboding setting for Hawthorne’s story.
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. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and thick boughs overhead (262).
This setting, the pitch-darkness of these engulfing woods in the dead of night, lends itself to a heightened state of anticipation or dread at what may be around the next bend for the protagonist.
Truthfully, Goodman Brown need not worry about the next bend, because his fate is sealed the moment he leaves his young wife to be in assemblage with Satan in the forest. The character of Faith, his wife, is a nearly absolute epitome of righteousness in the story, and it is only Goodman who leads her to condemnation. The Devil uses her to ultimately lead Goodman up to his unholy pulpit, sealing their eternities. With Faith as our marker for good, it is clear whom personifies evil, this stranger in the woods – The Devil.
There are other characters who are important to the story as well, some a bit more interesting than others. In fact, Goodman sees seemingly nearly everyone he knows in some shape, contributing to his despair. Goody Cloyse especially rattles Goodman into imbalance. She is a woman he respects greatly. Hawthorne writes, she is his “moral and spiritual advisor, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin” (264). The minister and Deacon Gookin are not far behind her on this night, Goodman will see them, as well. In fact, during Goody and The Devil’s communion Satan appears to Goody as her “old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly man that now is.” Goodman sees everyone with the devil; Goodman sees enough to have his allegiance to his god
shaken.
The Devil has had his evil role since his inception; it’s his purpose, but Goodman is who we see fall from grace. Goodman’s tale is the loss of his innocence – his abandonment of good for the forces of evil. Perhaps if Goodman had stayed that night with Faith, he could’ve kept his. But The Devil, deceptive and cunning, sly and contriving has led Goodman into the woods with him and the Indians and the witches. What Goodman witnesses there has shaken him to his core; it has changed him eternally. It would seem that in this tale of good versus evil, evil has triumphed. But then again, Hawthorne told his story so that puritans could remember Goodman, and carefully guard themselves against evil, or at least, to entertain them for an evening. Whatever the case, Young Goodman Brown does the latter splendidly well.