The Fall Of Faith In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

In order to survive infancy and advance into adulthood, a healthy plant must first develop roots. These roots provide the nutrients that the plant needs to grow bigger and stronger, and, they allow the plant to weather any storm that may pass its way. There is a lesson to be learned from the plant, and Young Goodman Brown, a character from the allegorical short story bearing the same name by Nathaniel Hawthorne, could very much use this lesson. This tale details Young Goodman Brown’s struggle against his life of sin, his attempts to cling to his wife, Faith, and his horror at the swift decline of a society he believed to be holy into that of depravity and devilry. This journey leads him to a depressed and hopeless life, believing within him that all the world is lost to sin. He finds no resolution and dies a lonely man. Why did this happen? Goodman Brown was a righteous, christian man of faith, what spiritual flaw must he have possessed that he might not experience spiritual restoration? The answer is that he, like the plant, needs roots to weather the storm. The fatal flaw of Young Goodman Brown was that his borrowed faith was not enough to carry him through the loss of his mentors, and it became meaningless. Throughout the beginning of the text, it is apparent that Goodman Brown relies upon the

But this was not so, for his faith had never been there in the first place. In James 2:17, the Bible says, “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead”. This was exactly the problem for Goodman Brown. While he retained the faith of his religion, he did not live his life according to that faith. Later in the short story, after his fall, he returns to his home to find his wife Faith waiting for him, as lovely as ever. But things are different now. He can no longer pretend that his Faith means something. Now it has been exposed, and he regards it as it truly