Theme Of Faith In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

In the story “Faith” is a symbol of two things when one is lost the other goes with it, when brown although hasn't completely lost “Faith” losses it an emergence of human reality changes brown. Brown losses faith when he gains the knowledge of everyone’s evil self. After seeing his pure wife at this cult of evil he begins to question whether heaven even existed and are we just hiding are true nature for are own personal benefit. As he states, “The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him… 'Faith! Faith!' cried the husband, 'look up to heaven, and resist the wicked one.' Whether Faith obeyed he knew not” (Hawthrone 9). Faith in this instance is two things his wife a character and a figure made to represent Brown's actual faith.
He ponders whether “faith obeyed” because he is questioning himself, not knowing if he stayed true to his religious faith. Causing major doubt in mind as stated by Hurley, “Nevertheless, he stands 'doubting whether there really was a heaven above him'. Goodman Brown makes one last desperate avowal of his resistance to evil… Associating it at once with the ribbons his wife had worn that evening, he shouts: “'My Faith is gone!'” ” (Hurley 415). Brown finally losses faith and changes his conception on what religion, heaven and sin are. Hurley explains that after realizing the truth of what he thought as pure is wrong, he losses faith. He demonstrates how Hawthrone associates faith with the ribbon that his wife wears, to brown the ribbon symbolizes the goods and evils of faith and the alpha and omega of ones fate. Fate in this instance being forever tied to every man's faith. Being a puritan Brown still believes in predestination, but because he could not accept his fate he was ultimately destroyed by it.
Two things possibly come out of browns journey the first being that the whole time it was a dream. If he were to dream it everything he pictured as reality in that moment was of his own doing and could be construed making it false. Therefore demonstrating that everything that happened in the story was already in his head to begin. Now if it were real and he passed out after losing faith then it demonstrates certain dark aspects of society. According to Brown, “It was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not desperate man….” (Hawthorne 9). Brown believes it to be a dream because he is still at this point too ambiguous as to what the pretense of reality is. According to his dream Brown sees the puritan society as dark, manipulative, and sinful. Further demonstrating his views that he already had on society, but needed to confirm them with a journey. A journey that from the beginning was already a lie making Brown's or “every man’s” reality unreal, further demonstrating hidden dark aspects of mankind. Two versions of what happened to Brown at the end of the story are depicted, while one is the more likely to have occurred as Pual J. Hurley states, “My point here is that “Young Goodman Brown” is a subtle work of fiction concerned with revealing a