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Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on April 28, 2022

“Young Goodman Brown,” initially appearing in Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) as both a bleak romance and a moral allegory, has maintained its hold on contemporary readers as a tale of initiation, alienation, and evil. Undoubtedly one of Nathaniel Hawthorne ’s most disturbing stories, it opens as a young man of the town, Goodman Brown, bids farewell to his wife, Faith, and sets off on a path toward the dark forest. Brown’s journey to the forest and his exposure to life-shattering encounters and revelations remain the subject of speculation. Although his meeting with the devil is clear, the results remain ambiguous and perplexing. When viewed as a bildungsroman, it is one of the bleakest in American fiction, long or short. Rather than an initiation into manhood, Brown’s is an initiation into evil.

Much of the power of the story derives from the opening scene of missed chances: Faith, introduced in the second sentence and given the first words of dialogue, leans out the window, her pink ribbons fl uttering, and entreats her husband to stay. Brown, however, although he continues to think of returning, is determined to depart on this dark road. Almost instantly, he—and the reader—become enveloped in the darkness and gloom of the forest. The narrator equates the dreariness with both solitude and evil, and the aura of doom pervades the story. Along the way Brown meets a man who looks curiously like Brown’s father and grandfather; that this traveler is the devil is clear from his snakelike stick and evident power to assume different shapes. The traveler reveals his role in helping Brown’s Puritan ancestors commit crimes against Quakers and Indians. Brown protests that his family has traditionally revered the principles of Christianity, but the traveler provides numerous examples of his converts across all of New England, in both small town and state positions, in the fields of politics, religion, and the law. That Brown himself is from Salem suggests Hawthorne’s fascination with the Puritan guilt of his—and our—own forefathers manifested in other short stories such as “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” a tale about the Puritan obsession with witchcraft.

Nathaniel Hawthorne. Getty Images

Next Brown hides in the forest, demonstrating his hypocrisy, as he sees Goody Cloyse, a pious townswoman, walking along the dark trail. She and the traveler openly discuss her witchcraft, and when Brown leaves his hiding place, he marvels at his memory of Goody Cloyse teaching him his catechism when he was a boy. Again Brown thinks of returning home to Faith, but instead he still hides in the forest, recognizing many of the townspeople passing through and hearing that tonight’s forest meeting will be attended by people from Connecticut and Rhode Island, as well as Massachusetts. Just as Brown thinks he can resist the devil and emerge from his hiding place, he hears a scream that sounds like Faith’s, and a pink ribbon fl utters to his feet.

From this point on, Brown himself becomes a grotesque figure, throwing himself with wholehearted if somewhat hysterical and despairing eagerness into the center of the darkness illuminated by the blazing fires of the meeting, clearly an image of hell. He recognizes all the most respected folk of the state unabashedly mingling with common thieves, prostitutes, and even criminals. The dreadful harmony of all these voices joined together in devil worship reaches a crescendo as the converts are brought forth: Among them, dimly recognized, are Brown’s father, mother, and wife. The devil assures the assembly that everyone has secretly committed crimes, from those of illicit sex to those of murdering husbands, fathers, and illegitimate babies. Indeed, says the devil, the whole earth is “one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot.” Evil, not good, he asserts, is the nature of humankind.

As do Adam and Eve, Brown and Faith stand on the edge of wickedness: Brown screams to Faith to resist the devil, and with these words the nightmare ends, Brown awakening against a rock. The narrator asks, Was his experience really a dream? Whether or not we believe in the reality of Brown’s experience; the narrator affirms that it clearly foreshadows Brown’s altered life: Henceforward he is a dour and disillusioned man who sees no good and trusts in no one. In just such a way did the Salem witch trials effectively bring about the collapse of Puritanism, yet the story resonates long afterward: We as readers understand that we are the mythical descendants of Young Goodman Brown. Why does Brown ignore Faith’s warnings? Do we interpret the tale as one of infidelity? Of Christian hypocrisy? Of colonial history? If Brown, as an American Adam, looked upon Eden and found it wanting, do we inherit his frightful knowledge? Or can we interpret it as a cautionary tale, one whose lessons can benefit us as we live our modern lives? More than a century and a half later, Hawthorne’s story continues to beguile us with its gloomy aura and subtly ambiguous theme.

Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Stories

Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Novels

BIBLIOGRAPHY Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” In Tales and Sketches, edited by Roy Harvey Pearce. New York: Library of America, 1982. Newman, Lea B. V. A Reader’s Guide to the Short Stories of Hawthorne. New York: Macmillan, 1979.

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Young Goodman Brown

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Young Goodman Brown: Introduction

Young goodman brown: plot summary, young goodman brown: detailed summary & analysis, young goodman brown: themes, young goodman brown: quotes, young goodman brown: characters, young goodman brown: symbols, young goodman brown: literary devices, young goodman brown: quiz, young goodman brown: theme wheel, brief biography of nathaniel hawthorne.

Historical Context of Young Goodman Brown

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• Full Title: “Young Goodman Brown”
• When Written: 1835
• Where Written: Salem, Massachusetts
• When Published: 1835 and 1846
• Literary Period: American Romanticism
• Genre: Short story, allegory
• Setting: 17th century Salem, Massachusetts
• Climax: When Goodman Brown calls on Faith to resist the devil
• Antagonist: The devil, the hypocrisy of the Puritans
• Point of View: Third person

Extra Credit for Young Goodman Brown

Descendant of a witch trial judge. Hawthorne was a descendent of John Hathorne, a Puritan judge who ordered the execution of the Salem Witch Trials. Hawthorne added the “w” to his name to hide his shameful ancestry.

The white whale. Herman Melville dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne.

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The Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown"

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Words: 778 |

Published: Jan 29, 2024

Words: 778 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Analysis of the protagonist, young goodman brown, exploration of the allegorical elements in the story, examination of the theme of moral ambiguity and sin, evaluation of the role of faith and religion.

• Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Young Goodman Brown." Ed. Nina Baym. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. B. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. 385-395.
• Laws, Karen. "The Struggle in 'Young Goodman Brown'." 2010. Humanities-Ebooks. http://www.humanities-ebooks.co.uk/cgi-bin/tbl.cgi?filename=hl02/ch18-21f.html
• McKeithan, Daniel. "Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown': An Interpretation." The Bijdragen. 1952. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/360534?seq=1

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Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories

By nathaniel hawthorne, young goodman brown and other hawthorne short stories summary and analysis of young goodman brown.

Young Goodman Brown, a young and innocent man, bids farewell to his young wife, Faith. Faith asks him to stay, but Goodman Brown says he must leave, just for the evening. He ventures into the gloomy forest of Salem, and is soon approached by a man of about fifty, to whom he bears a strange resemblance. His companion wore simple clothing, but carried a staff that resembled a great black snake and seemed to move like a living serpent. Time and again, Goodman Brown protests the trip, insisting that he must turn around. But, his companion tells him that his father and grandfather had walked along the same path, as well as other important townspeople, such as the governor. Goodman Brown continues to follow. Along the path, they see a woman, Goody Cloyse, who taught Goodman Brown his catechism. His companion begins to resemble the devil, while the woman, a witch. The staff, too, seems to take life.

After a while, Goodman Brown sits down, determined to not go any father. His companions go ahead without him. As he sits, Goodman Brown thinks he hears the minister and Deacon Gookin on horseback discussing the night’s meeting and a young woman who would be taken into communion that night. Goodman Brown begins to hear voices, and among them, the lamentations of Faith. He shouts her name, but hears only a echoes, and then silence. A pink ribbon – Faith’s ribbon – flutters down form above. “Maddened with despair”, Goodman Brown rushes forth into the forest, laughing louder and louder, until he reaches the gathering. There, he sees an altar, surrounded by four blazing trees. Many of the town’s most honorable members were present, as were some of the least welcomed – the sinners and criminals. Goodman Brown is led to the altar, where a cloaked female figure is also led. A dark figure prepares to welcome them into the fold, pointing to the crowd behind them - the crowd Young Goodman Brown had reverenced from youth. The figure revealed them all as sinners, noting that “evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness”. The cloaked woman is revealed to be Faith. Before the figure could lay the mark of baptism on Goodman Brown, he called to Faith to “look up to Heaven, and resist the wicked one.” Immediately, he finds himself alone in the forest.

The next morning, Goodman Brown arrives back in town, bewildered about the events from the previous night. He runs into many people he saw in the forest – the Deacon, Goody Cloyse - all acting as if nothing had happened. He sees Faith, but passes without acknowledging her. Since the “night of that fearful dream” Goodman Brown became a dark and gloomy man, who saw nothing but blasphemy all around him.

Commonly understood themes in Young Goodman Brown have included the pervasiveness and secrecy of sin and evil alive within all people, and the hypocrisy of Puritanism. The most obvious reading is that Brown, an innocent and naive fellow, is ruined after finding hypocrisy in his religious faith (embodied in his wife, Faith). His wife, as was often the case in Puritan New England, was seen as a representation of the domestic sphere and a pure being untainted by the evils of the world, so pure that she might even save her husband. Goodman Brown puts her on a pedestal, as he does his religion, but her appearance in the forest leaves him without hope for redemption and his eventual estrangement from her signals his true estrangement from God.

A similar reading of the story revolves around the similarities between the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the fall of Brown and Faith. The devil bears a staff with a serpent on it, reminiscent of the serpent that told Adam and Eve to taste the fruit from the forbidden tree. Led to sin through curiosity, Adam and Eve lose their innocence after following the devil. Likewise, Goodman Brown watches the devil, along with other notable members of the community, heading toward the gathering. He ventures into the forest despite Faith’s warning, driven by curiosity and the devil’s appeals, just as Eve ignored God’s command to avoid the forbidden fruit. Brown's knowledge that "Evil is the nature of mankind" taints his relationships with his faith and everyone in town.

Another reading is that Brown’s experience is derived from an internalized sin. His journey into the forest was, in itself, a sinful act. He well understood that his mission was evil, and his acts impure, yet was surprised to find others whom he reverenced following the same path. In the end, he breaks from the group, attempting to relieve himself of sin. But, the effects of sin remain, forever after tainting his opinion of good and evil. As one author writes, “This is not a story of the disillusionment that comes to a person when he discovers that many supposedly religious and virtuous people are really sinful: it is, rather, a story of a man whose sin led him to consider all other people sinful. Brown came eventually to judge others by himself: he thought them sinful and hypocritical because he was sinful and hypocritical himself.” (McKeithan, 96) The idea of sin in every person, including Goodman Brown, is supported by the chameleon-like character of the Devil. By taking the shape of Brown's father, the devil demonstrates that evil can live within any person, even Young Goodman Brown himself.

Still others examine the possibility that Brown’s experience was merely a dream, and that all men fear that all men are, at the most basic level, evil. The story may be purposefully ambiguous, balanced perfectly between the good and the evil, as the story’s beginning an end are in direct opposition. (Fogle) Finally, the story has also been considered an examination of nineteenth-century gender roles and the concern that wives would encroach on their husband’s presence in the public sphere. Violation of this separation is present in the story, as Faith leaves her husband with a kiss on the doorstep, but then reemerges at the gathering. (Keil)

Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

In which page and excerpts of Natherniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown portrays the features of a gothic literature?

Foreboding Setting:

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...

Sights from a Steeple

A watchman watches from a steeple what's going on in the world. This would be Victorian era.

To what extent is Hawthorne's use of dreams crucial in "Young Goodman Brown" and in "The Birthmark"? Explain how Hawthorne uses dreams as a means to complicate our view of his characters.

Many of Hawthorne's short stories blur the lines between the supernatural and reality, as the characters often experience dream-like events.

One example of this blurred distinction occurs in "Young Goodman Brown" . It is unclear whether the witch...

Study Guide for Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories

Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories study guide contains a biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis of Hawthorne's short stories.

• About Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories
• Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories Summary
• Character List

Essays for Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories

Hawthorne's Short Stories essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Hawthorne's Short Stories.

• Twice-Tilled Tracts: Revisions of the Garden of Eden in Hawthorne's Short Stories
• The Importance of Whiteness and Race in Hawthorne's The Birth-Mark
• Fundamental Themes in Roger Malvin's Burial
• Penetrating the Mind of Young Goodman Brown
• The "Men of the Crowd"

Lesson Plan for Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories
• Relationship to Other Books
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• Notes to the Teacher
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• Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories Bibliography

E-Text of Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories

Hawthorne's Short Stories e-text contains the full text of Hawthorne's short stories including Young Goodman Brown.

• THE GRAY CHAMPION
• SUNDAY AT HOME
• THE WEDDING-KNELL
• THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL
• THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT

Wikipedia Entries for Young Goodman Brown and Other Hawthorne Short Stories

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Introduction & Overview of Young Goodman Brown

Young Goodman Brown Summary & Study Guide Description

"Young Goodman Brown," written in 1835 by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is known for being one of literature's most gripping portrayals of seventeenth-century Puritan society. The tale first appeared in the April issue of New England Magazine and was later included in Hawthorne's popular short story collection, Mosses from an Old Manse , in 1846.

"Young Goodman Brown" tells the tale of a young Puritan man drawn into a covenant with the Devil. Brown's illusions about the goodness of his society are crushed when he discovers that many of his fellow townspeople, including religious leaders and his wife, are attending a Black Mass. At the end of the story, it is not clear whether Brown's experience was nightmare or reality, but the results are nonetheless the same. Brown is unable to forgive the possibility of evil in his loved ones and as a result spends the rest of his life in desperate loneliness and gloom.

Though a work of fiction, "Young Goodman Brown" is widely considered to be one of the most effective literary works to address the hysteria surrounding the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Hawthorne is also remembered for helping to establish the short story as a respected form of literature and as a proponent of instilling morals and lessons into his writing.

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Discussion Questions

Goodman Brown ends up a broken man who lives the remainder of his life in misery and gloom. Should readers feel bad for Brown? Is he a victim of society? Why or why not?

Dreams are a significant motif in fiction written during American Romanticism . How does Hawthorne use the dream motif to reveal the inner-most fears of his central character? How does his use of dreams compare to other authors writing in Hawthorne’s time?

Some readers may argue that despite Brown’s downfall as a Christian, his revelation in the wilderness leads to growth in his character. Despite Brown’s gloomy awakening, do you think he has grown? Why or why not?

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