Young Goodman Brown - Nathaniel Hawthorne

 Goodman Brown goes into the forest with the Devil's advocate. Goodman refuses to go any farther into the forest once he realizes many church goers had become associated with the Devil. He hurries to the clearing when he realizes his wife, Faith, is there. They both are taken into communion and go back to their normal life the next day. Goodman never recovers from the experience and lives the rest of his life in misery and regret.


     I believe that Goodman Brown did not make a conscious choice to continue into the woods after he told his companion that he would go no further. The Devil is known for using trickery to get people to bend to his will, so he carried Faith's voice to Goodman and showed Goodman how many people from his community were at the ceremony. When he hears his Faith's voice, his id took over and he raced to her rescue. From then on in the story, he was not making his decision based on what is right and wrong, but what his unconscious mind decides. At one point he sees an apparition of his dead father, and maybe his dead mother, which could be used as another example of how the Devil would trick him into making unconscious decisions.

When you look at this story in the historical context, you can easily see why Goodman Brown would not want to be seen in the forest with his companion. This story was written in the 1800's when religion was how you lived your life. You went to church every weekend and you feared the Devil and his trickery. Also, women were not eligible to hold power and yet you see a women in charge of the gathering in the forest. Martha Carrier had been promised to be Queen of Hell by the Devil. After the ceremony, Goodman knows that he has gone against his way of living, as has his wife. He knows that he is now hellbound and that fear was instilled in people in the 1800's from a very young age. Everything that happened in this story was completely against the way of life of the time. It shows that everyone has a dark side to them, even the most innocent people (ex Faith.)