Journal for Young Goodman Brown Story

Journal for Young Goodman Brown Story
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Journal for Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The short story is about the disturbing dream of a young puritan husband, Goodman Brown. In the dream, he comes face to face with evil and consequently, he examines the nature of evil in man. Brown is disgusted by the evil that he encounters without realizing his own involvement. As the story begins, Goodman Brown leaves Faith, his wife for a night errand, even as she begs him not to go. She is the only symbol of hope in the story and is also a symbolic of love – the love between a woman and a man, and also the love, devotion and faith that Goodman Brown has in God. Without Faith, Goodman Brown does not have faith and is reliant on her, he says, “She’s a blessed angel on earth,” adding “after this one night, I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven” (137). When he later on meets with the traveler/devil, he states that he was late because “Faith kept me back awhile” (137), faith has a double meaning in this statement, his wife, and his faith to God delayed the meeting. In the meeting, he notices that the man held a stuff that “bore the likeness of a great black snake” (137), symbolizing the presence of evil.
The traveler’s stuff guides Goodman Brown to the Devil’s ceremony that destroys his faith in this man. Moreover, his faith is also shaken when he sees Goody Cloyse talking with the Devil since she was still his spiritual and moral adviser, and had taught him catechism. His next encounter utterly shatters his faith. He hears a woman’s voice and quickly assumes it is that of his beloved wife Faith. He then yells her voice, then a pink ribbon similar to that of her wife flies through the air, and he grabs it. At this point in time, he loses all his faith in the world declaring that there is “no good on earth” (142). The ceremony th...