three months he had been married to a lovely young woman symbolizing religious faith. He was not loyal to Faith, though he fully expected to be loyal after just one more indulgence in sin. At some earlier time he had met Satan and had promised to meet him in the forest at night. It is doubtful that he recognized Satan at first, but he knew that his journey was an evil one, and his conscience hurt him because of his disloyalty to Faith. He had confidence in his ability to indulge in the sin—whatever it was—once more and then resist all future temptations. He did not know in advance how far into the forest he would be persuaded to go or what the results would be.

Faith urged him to postpone his journey until the next day, but he said it had to be made between sunset and sunrise. His heart smote him and he called himself a wretch to leave her on such an errand; be believed it would kill her to know what work was to be done that night—and it would have appalled him too if he had known. He thought of her as a blessed angel on earth and said, "After this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven." This "excellent resolve" did not prevent his making haste "on his present evil purpose." It is clear that before Brown had any suspicions concerning the sincerity of supposedly pious people—that is, before he had entered the forest—he was himself deliberately and knowingly indulging in sin, though with the intention of reforming soon.

In the body of the story Satan is the main speaker. In two disguises—first as the man with the serpent staff and second as the priest who presides at the meeting of sinners—Satan poisons the mind of Brown and destroys his belief in virtue and piety. But the reader should not make Brown's mistake: he should not suppose that Satan always speaks the truth—nor need he suppose that Satan always expresses Hawthorne's own opinions.

Satan denies the existence of virtue and piety in the world. It is a consequence and a punishment of Brown's sin that he believes Satan and thus becomes cynical. Hawthorne himself believed that evil impulses visit every human heart, but he did not believe that most men are mainly evil or that most men convert any considerable proportion of their evil impulses into evil deeds. In Fancy's Show-Box he said:

It is not until the crime is accomplished that guilt clinches its grip upon the guilty heart, and claims it for its own. . . . In truth, there is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve, either for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution.

In short, Hawthorne himself does not share the black pessimism that finally came to Goodman Brown as a result of his sin. Hawthorne greatly admired many people with whom he was personally acquainted, and many good characters are pictured in his tales and romances.

Goodman Brown became cynical as a result of his sin and thought he saw evil even where none existed. This is not a story of the disillusionment that comes to a person when he discovers that many supposedly religious and virtuous people are really sinful; it is, rather, a story of a man whose sin led him to consider all other people sinful. Brown came eventually to judge others by himself: he thought them sinful and hypocritical because he was sinful and hypocritical himself. He did not judge them accurately: he misjudged them. The minister of Salem village, Deacon Gookin, Goody Cloyse, and Faith were all good in spite of what Goodman Brown eventually came to think of them.

Moreover, it is not necessary to choose between interpreting the story literally and taking it as a dream. "Young Goodman Brown" is an allegory—which is what Hawthorne meant when he suggested that it might have been a dream—and an allegory is a fictitious story designed to teach an abstract truth. In reality, Brown did not go into a forest at night nor did he dream that he did. What Brown did was to indulge in sin (represented by the journey into the forest at night—and of course the indulgence might have lasted much longer than a night: weeks, months, even years) under the mistaken notion that he could break off whenever he wanted to. Instead of breaking off promptly, he continued to indulge in sin longer than he had expected and suffered the consequences, which were the loss of religious faith and faith in all other human beings.

What Brown's sin was at the beginning of the story Hawthorne does not say, but it was not cynicism: at that time he was not cynical, although he was already engaged in evil dealings with Satan. Cynicism was merely the result of the sin and came later and gradually. By not identifying the sin Hawthorne gives the story a wider application. Which sin it was does not greatly matter: what Hawthorne puts the stress on is the idea that this sin had evil consequences.