Young Goodman Brown's Downfall

A detailed Summary of Young Goodman Brown's Downfall

"Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorn is an excellent short story telling of Young Goodman Brown's (the main character) religious trials and tribulations. If a person had seen the minister of a church playing poker at a neighbor's house, would he/she reconsider his/her faith and deem him a hoax? Possibly. Society has a set of ideals placed upon religious leaders and if they should sway away from the ideals, society will damn them. Hawthorne attacks Puritanism in this short story through the struggles between good and evil, symbolism, and blasphemy of the church.

Young Goodman Brown struggles often in the story between good and evil. In the beginning of the story Brown struggles with the dilemma of going to meet with the devil and his wife Faith asking, "Pray, tarry with me this night, dear husband." Upon meeting the devil at the beginning of the forest trail, Brown states, "Faith kept me back awhile." The reader can look either at "Faith" as his wife or "Faith" as in his religious belief. Although the story claims that "Faith" is his wife, the religious side is that Brown is struggling between meeting with the devil or keeping to his faith and staying true to God. At midpoi

Hawthorne makes great use of symbolism to attack Puritanism. In this story, the devil carries a staff with him shaped like a serpent. The Bible signifies that the snake is the devil as told in the tale of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. The snake lures Adam and Eve to the apple tree as was Goody Cloyse lured to the devil's meeting by the serpent staff. In the communion of the devil, the mighty cleric dipped his thumb into a basin and put "one mighty blood-spot" on the foreheads of the converts. As in a biblical communion the ecclesiastic leader of the church would dip his thumb into holy water or ash and draw the sign of the cross. Hawthorne uses the color pink, which has several meanings, salvation and faith being most important to this story. Browns wife "Faith" has pink ribbons in her hair and when Brown looks to the sky and prays, he hears a cry of grief and something comes fluttering down from the sky. Brown picked the item up and was mortified to find pink ribbons in his hand. With the pink ribbons in his hand, Brown cried, "My Faith is gone!" The majority of the story takes place on the trail of the forest and in the heart of the forest. The author uses the forest trail as a symbol to imply Brown's life path. All through a person's life, he/she is making choices between good and evil. Hawthorne attempts to show us that everyone is capable of sin, but not everyone is capable of accepting sin.

Ultimately, in the end of this short story all of Hawthorne's feelings toward Puritanism come out through Young Goodman Brown's impertinence of the church. The morning after the communion of the devil, Brown hears the congregation singin

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Approximate Word count = 1124
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English