Anyone familiar with Nathaniel Hawthorne is well aware of his characteristic use of symbolic imagery in his stories, which are generally about the contradictory good and evil sides of humanity. In this regard, the short story Young Goodman Brown does not disappoint. Read at face value, Young Goodman Brown is a story about a Puritan settler living in Salem during the witch trials. This settler attends a witch’s meeting in the forest that forever changes him. Whether the meeting was real or contrived is of little consequence, as the occurrence was real enough to Goodman Brown to alter his entire existence. But when looked at closer, an all too familiar truth can be seen in this eerie tale.
The symbolism begins with the paradox that is Goodman Brown’s new wife, Faith. Her name alone is cause for attention. Each time Goodman Brown refers to her, it is only too clear that he may in fact be referring to his own personal faith in God, life, and humanity, which is questioned to the point of breaking in this narrative. In fact, it seems that Faith is not even a character, so to speak. Rather, she is a tangible symbol of Goodman Brown’s faith and the changes that it endures when Goodman Brown loses his childhood innocence.
At the onset, Faith’s character is inconsistent. She is neither perfect nor evil. She is portrayed as youthful and innocent, “Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap.” In Goodman Brown’s mind, she is “a blessed angel on earth” and his personal way of justifying his current intentions, “after this one night, I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven.” The pink ribbons in her cap are mentioned several times. Pink, at first thought, elicits ideas of femininity, youth, and naivety. But the color pink itself is not its own color; rather, is a blend of red and white. White is often paired with angels and innocence, while red is the color of prostitution and blood. Faith also is a blend, but of good and evil, which is much like any child.
Goodman Brown’s Faith was personified as childlike and immature, but all children must grow up. With the coming of adulthood comes also the loss of innocence. When a child becomes an adult, their eyes are opened and they see the world for all that it is, and not all that it had once appeared. Young Goodman Brown is no exception, and as he became an adult, he was forced to see things he would rather not have.
He realized that his father was not the pillar of morality he had seemed, saying, “My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him…shall I be the first of the name of Brown, that ever took this path.” He was quickly corrected by the old man who was representative of Satan, “I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans.” Goodman Brown also came to understand that his fellow citizens were not as pure and righteous as his childhood had allowed him to think: “That old woman taught me my catechism! said the young man, and there was a world of meaning in this simple comment.”
Through the words of the old man/Satan, he realized that everyone he knew was sinful: “Hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widow’s weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime, and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers’ wealth, and how fair damsels – blush not, sweet ones! – have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole guest, to an infant’s funeral.” Forced to face such shocking revelations, Goodman Brown was filled with utter despair and disappointment. But the biggest disappointment was yet to come.
Goodman Brown had to accept that he himself was also sinful, and no longer the person he had always considered himself to be. Amidst all this two-faced sin, Goodman Brown would have liked to know that he and Faith alone were exempt. However, he saw his own Faith at the meeting, losing her (and his) innocence as well. She even lost her childlike pink ribbons. He watched helplessly as his Faith was questioned, and tempted possibly to failure. In her innocence, she had been his stronghold at the beginning, “Faith kept me back awhile,” and he made one last effort to shield her from the impending corruption, “Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!”
It was already too late for Young Goodman Brown. While the reader can never be one hundred percent sure of the nature of that fateful night – was it real, or only a terrible dream – it is a moot point. The blissful contentment of childhood had been forever stolen from him. Once gone, it can never be replaced. He had gone into the woods a carefree young man; enthusiastic, optimistic, and in love. He had come out jaded, hardened, cold, and bitter. Literally, he had entered the story Young Goodman Brown and ended it as just Goodman Brown. He looked into his own soul and saw a side of himself that he hated; a side of the world that he hated. Even when the promise of his old youthful happiness called to him, “Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at the sight of him, that she skipt along the street, and almost kissed her husband before the whole village,” he knew that he could never go back, “Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting.” He is doomed to live on the rest of his days as an unhappy, cynical, loveless man.
While there is so much more here, this story is primarily a tale of the loss of innocence, a pessimistic coming-of-age story where maturity coincides with disappointment. Faith is not simply a person but also an element of another, and Goodman Brown can be anyone. His realizations and reactions are common to every person, no matter how extraordinary the particular circumstances. Every reader can say that they personally have experienced this, for everyone is more jaded and less trusting today than they were in, say, grade school. While this story seems scholarly, deep, and perhaps even cumbersomely difficult to understand, it speaks of the most common and disappointing experiences of every person.
*All quotations taken directly from original text.
