Transformation In Young Goodman Brown

Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown tells the tale of Goodman Brown as he advances on a dreary path better left untraveled. On his way to his dubious destination, Brown encounters several odd characters and experiences unexplained events. These situations lead to an epiphany, conflict within himself, and finally transformation.

As Brown’s dear Faith clings onto his sleeve in a desperate attempt to get him to stay home for the night, Brown dismisses her without much guilt. Though Brown understands how troubled Faith is, her pleas are not enough to deviate him from his plans. As the two finally part, Brown walks down the darkening street as his wife watches until his form vanishes all together, Brown’s mind cries out “What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand!” Though admitting

to himself that he should not be away from home that night, Brown reasons with himself by thinking “… and after this one night I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.” With that, Brown sets off, his ‘evil purpose’ as Hawthorne put it, sitting in Brown’s mind like a reminder. Into the forest, Brown ventures, and one of the first wicked sights he gazes upon is a man that looks too similar to himself for comfort. Almost as if on cue after thinking that the devil may be close to him, the stranger begins walking next to Brown. The man is holding a serpent like staff, offering it to Brown when Brown begins to slow his pace. Though at first rejecting, Brown still remains sturdy in his decision to stay on the path.
However, as Brown and the man walk on the path, encountering other people of the village, their presence vanishing as Brown takes another look, doubt begins to crawl into Brown’s mind. As the stranger throws his staff, later a stick, both animate and slither away as though they were snakes all along. Brown’s companion urges Brown to make haste on the path. The two continue leisurely, until they come across a gloomy opening. There, Brown finally stills himself, “…my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge on this errand…” Rather than acting surprised, the man gives a recited answer, as though knowing that Brown would’ve stopped before he did so. While contemplating his journey, familiar voices catch his attention. Deciding it would be wise to stay out of sight, Brown is appalled to find that the voices belong to two respectable members of the community. Sitting in silence as they make their way into the forbidden woods, Brown begins to question if heaven truly existed. As this question went into the air, it was as though the world reacted to Brown’s doubt specifically. The world seemed to turn malicious, designating Brown as their target. As he listens to mixed conversations, a voice that he thought belonged to Faith, his heart breaks as a piercing scream rips through the air. Believing his Faith was gone, Brown snaps, hurrying on the path with the staff in tow. Cackling like a madman, Brown declares that without Faith there is no longer any good remaining inside him, and so he begins to replicate the devil himself. As he stumbled across the group of church goers, a final hope flickers into his heart as he questions whether or not Faith is still alive. Brown experienced a chilling vivid nightmare, members of his community present as they swore that only to evil will their hearts beat. Crying out for Faith to resist the darkness, Brown does not get to see the outcome before re-entering reality.
Nonetheless, Brown awakens in a world lacking the malice he had encountered.

In contrast to taking the sights as a warning, Brown instead becomes suspicious of everyone he saw in that realm. Every smile, Brown saw as feigned. Even his beloved Faith, who had been ecstatic to see her husband return home safely, was roughly pushed away as Brown laid his eyes upon her. Understandable, Brown couldn’t shake the visions, so traumatized by them in fact, that he began applying them to real life. Until his final breath, Brown remained un-trusting of the world around him, and all those inhabiting it. What remained of Goodman Brown passed off, Faith following not long after. Yet, “…they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.”

The tale of Goodman Brown is an unfortunate one, yet not enough to pity him. Brown declared that he would venture on the road that should’ve been left abandoned, an epiphany manifesting in Brown’s mind. Following after, came the arrival of Brown’s conflict with himself. As Brown encountered truly wicked things from the result of his doubt, in the end it changed Brown for the worst, as the world he saw in his nightmare was now his

reality.