Losing Faith Young Goodman Brown

Losing Faith Young Goodman Brown

Throughout the short story "Young Goodman Brown," written by Nathaniel Hawthorne the main character is searching for Faith in what appears to be an increasingly corrupt world. Faith takes on a double meaning in this story, for Faith is used both as the name of Young Goodman Brown's pretty young wife and the spiritual devotion of Young Goodman Brown to the Puritan Faith. The dual usage of Faith in this short story, along with its theme of devil worship amongst Puritan society draws the reader in, and leaves the story imprinted on his brain for a long time to come.

As the story opens, Young Goodman Brown is about to enter the forest to partake upon an "evil purpose." He leaves behind his sweet, pretty, young wife of three months, who wears pretty pink ribbons in her hair, urging her to "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee" (p. 102). Young Goodman Brown is hesitant about leaving his Faith behind to go on such an errand, to venture into the forest where "the devil himself could be at my very elbow!" (p. 103).

Once in the forest, Young Goodman Brown is met with "the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree" (p. 103). When questioned as to why he has dallied in meeting this figure, Young Goodman Brown replies "Faith kept me back awhile" (p. 103). In the literal sense, Young Goodman Brown's pretty young wife delayed him from his meeting with the dark figure by begging him to "put off his journey until sunrise and sleep in his own bed to-night" (p. 103). In a symbolic sense, Young Goodman Brown's devotion to all that is just in the world has made him hesitant to enter the corrupt reality of the forest.

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...ditate his sermon, and Goody Cloyse catechizing a little girl. He spies the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at the sight of him that she skipped along the street and almost kissed her husband before the whole village" (p. 111). Young Goodman Brown looks sternly and sadly into her face, and passes on without a greeting.

"Had Young Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?" (p. 112). It does not matter, for Young Goodman Brown becomes "a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man" (p. 111). He shrinks from the bosom of Faith, and he dies a "hoary corpse" (p. 111). It does not matter that Young Goodman Brown rejected the Devil at his fiery altar that night in the forest. The Devil has claimed his Faith in humanity in another way.