Fragility Of Faith In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

Everyone has had a dream that felt so real that it left him or her wondering the following morning if it was truly just a dream. Many have also had a similar experience with a frightening nightmare. However, while these nightmares can feel realistic, they are always just a figment of our imaginations and aren’t very influential in people’s lives. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Goodman Brown, the protagonist of the story “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In this story, Brown has a disturbing experience involving The Devil, which changes Brown’s perspective of others and leads him to have a dreadful, “gloomy” life. However, this event that Brown witnesses is clearly just a dream. This dream is an allegory for the fragility of faith in religious zealots. Young Goodman Brown is portrayed to be a religious fanatic in

Throughout the story, Brown makes multiple references about his religion, “We have been a race of honest men and good christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name Brown that ever took this path” (Hawthorne 2). Brown is clearly a christian, and by saying, “We have been a race of honest men and good christians,” he is referring to his family and how all of his relatives were “good christians.” Brown also sounds weary of the journey ahead because he questions if he should, “be the first of the name Brown that ever took this path.” This weariness of his adventure involving Satan is because Brown is a religious zealot and is worried what the possible meeting with the evil hearted Devil could do to his faith in christianity. Early in the story, before Brown embarks on his escapade, he says goodbye to his wife named Faith, “Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee” (Hawthorne 1). Prayers are religious practices, and Brown’s trust