Hawthorne And Young Goodman Brown

It has always appeared to be fact that sin was an easy word to define and that merely doing anything that goes against God and his teachings is a sin. In order to avoid sin, one must possess an infinite amount of faith and be able to follow the teachings of a master that one can't always see, but needs to understand is always there. In literature, many works have been created dealing with faith and sin, but most are usually not written from a perspective in which a sinning man does not seek redemption. Most stories are not allegories dealing with a man leaving his wife - named Faith - so that he can go off into the woods and, literally, dance with the devil. Most stories, however, are not Young Goodman Brown and most are not written by Nathaniel Hawthorne as a response to the guilt he felt over being the descendant of people involved in the Salem Witch trials. An immensely important part of this allegory is the character of Faith, Young Goodman's wife, who represents just what her name says, and how her character affects the entire story. Her existence alone allows for the crisis Young Goodman Brown feels and even later further enhances that same crisis. She is both the cause and solution to all of Brown's problems, if only he would allow himself to accept his faith rather than enter into the kingdom of the devil.

Faith is a highly subjective thing that all people who wish to have religion in their lives must have and embrace. Now, Hawthorne wrote Young Goodman Brown as a commentary on a seriously religious society that went as far as to drown women who were preported to be witches. As Brown tells his wife that he is going away for a while, she - in her pink bows and her young face, implores him not to go. Brown knows that he's about to embark on a journey where having faith is important and necessary. Even he acknowledges such a fact when he states "what a wretch am I, to leave her on such an errand." (Hawthorne 614). Brown is fully aware that on the journey he's about to embark on, he needs his faith. However, he's also aware that if he brings his faith along then the meeting with the devil will go differently than planned and will end with him maybe not accepting the devil's pleas. This makes Faith the most important character in the entire allegory because he is without her and all breaks lose, but he is only without her because he is not nurturing her as faith needs to be nurtured.

He's the typical male in this analogy not paying attention to his new bride but just going off and doing whatever he wants. Hawthorne manages to portray Faith convincingly, as both a physical and metaphorical element of the story. However, Hawthorne's focus is not merely on the woman or the man, but on society as a whole. This was a society where it was viewed that women ``could not be truly touched by God", stated John E. Beck in his work Hawthorne's Historical Allegory: An Examination of the American Conscience.,"..Any woman who dared to speak the word of God must surely be an instrument of the devil'' (http://www.iusb.edu/~journal/20002/ jacobs_2/jacobs.html). Hawthorne's commentary implied that if society hadn't looked at it that way, Brown would have embraced his wife (and thus his faith) and not fallen the way that he did.

Brown, however, is a man that is so curious about the occult and the devil that he refuses to even acknowledge the importance of maintain his faith and belief in God. The man is so lacking in his faith and his belief in god and the system that he's willing to enter a meeting with the devil completely unarmed and unprepared. Brown's inability to see the sins of humanity blinds him, and following his meeting with the devil his eyes were rudely awakened to the reality of evil of mankind, or the ``wickedness in this dark world'' (Hawthorne 621). The disturbing reality decimates his soul and leaves him embittered and angry for the rest of his days ``for his dying hour was gloom'' (Hawthorne 622). This is all a well thought out allusion to the fall of man. John E. Becker states that ``the old story here is, of