Goodman Brown leaves his home one night, and he looks back at his wife, Faith. This could allegorically represent the idea that the deeper he goes into his own heart, the more he leaves his Christian faith behind. As he journeys within, he knows that he has an "evil purpose" and fears that the Devil is waiting nearby. This stands in for the Christian's knowledge of temptation, of its presence, its allure, and the inevitability that we will, at some point, give in.
As he walks deeper and deeper into the forest, this seems to signify a dark spiritual place, a place where the light of God cannot shine once the person chooses to enter it willingly. Brown knows he should not go, but he chooses to do so anyway:
He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind.
Brown purposefully decides to walk further and further away from Faith, deeper and deeper into the spiritual darkness of his own heart, and the forest grows darker around him too. What Brown seems to learn about other people's secret sins—his own family members' and friends'—could actually be information that he already knows within himself: we are all sinners, and we all fall prey to temptation. Just as he chooses sin, others will do so as well.
To answer this question it is important to be aware of how this story functions as an allegory. An allegory is a particular type of tale where characters, events and objects act both literally but also suggest or point towards some other quality or characteristic. This is most obvious in the use of names in this story, with Faith, Goodman Brown's young wife, being a clear use of allegorical naming. Note how she is introducted as being "aptly named" in the first paragraph, and how she is refered to by Goodman Brown after he bids her farewell:
Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.
Faith's character is clearly meant to suggest some kind of Christian goodness or innocence that allows those who cleave to her to gain access to heaven. Once we understand the allegorical nature of this story we can see how everything else can be considered to be an internal journey of one man's soul into the world of evil. The forest itself, and the fellow traveller that Goodman Brown comes across, clearly represent evil, and we see this story allegorically as representing the evil that tempts us all.
What evidence suggests Brown's forest journey symbolizes a journey into his own heart?
Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown," as your question suggests, is built on ambiguity: does Brown make a physical trip into the forest in this visit to his dark side, or is his journey purely psychological, occurring in a dream vision? Putting aside the very detailed realism with which Hawthorne describes Brown's journey and those he meets, readers with a modern sensibility believe the journey to be psychological for several reasons.
The belief system of the Puritans includes the conviction that evil in the form of witches and Satan himself are present in their lives both spiritually and physically—Satan, for example, can torment and tempt a person in dreams, and he can appear in life as himself or anyone else. Witches can appear in their human form, and they can torment others in their "spectral" form—that is, as spirit beings. So, it is quite possible that a young Puritan, testing his belief system, might actually take a journey to see whether he can encounter evil in its physical form.
Goodman Brown appears to be on his way to find evil when he says farewell to his wife, Faith:
"What a wretch am I, to leave her on such an errand! . . . Well; she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night, I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven.". . . With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose.
Hawthorne creates an absolutely plausible scene of a young man, with consciousness of his ill intent, expressing his belief that he will be saved, after this journey to find evil, by the goodness of his wife, aptly named Faith.
One of the most important aspects of Puritan life that militates against interpreting the story literally is that no Puritan in his or her right mind would venture from a village at night unarmed and unaccompanied. Attacks from Native Americans, especially on travelers, are common in this period (late seventeenth century) and, in the Puritan belief system, Native Americans are thought to be allied with Satan, another reason for avoiding the forest. Although Brown, if he is distracted sufficiently by an obsession to seek evil, might actually make such a journey, it stains credulity that he would ignore the very real dangers of such an excursion. He might be interested in meeting Satan, but he is not keen to meet Native American warriors.
When Brown is walking with Satan in the forest, Satan points out that he is very familiar with Brown's father and grandfather:
I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem. And it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in king Philip's war. They were my good friends, both . . .
Satan means to convince Brown that he is in good company and, more importantly, that his father and grandfather have committed deeds that are, even by the standards of the era, morally questionable. Brown's response to this surprising news is, “I marvel they never spoke of these matters," another indication that what is going on is in Brown's dream, not in physical reality.
More evidence of Brown's deeply disturbed psychological state is embodied in his meeting with Goody Cloyse, "a very pious and exemplary dame," who not only gave him his religious education but is also still "his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin." As it happens, Brown encounters all three on his way to Satan's convocation of witches in the forest, a possibility but not a probability (unless he is dreaming).
That Brown is immersed in a dream vision becomes more obvious when he falls into what can be described as a revery in the forest and believes he hears Faith's voice in a cloud that seems to be proceeding deeper into the forest and then sees Faith's pink ribbon floating earthward. At this point, Brown shouts
“My Faith is gone!” cried he, after one stupefied moment. “There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! for to thee is this world given.”
It is one thing to accept Brown's dangerous journey into the forest to explore his dark side, but it is quite another to accept Faith being transported in a cloud to Satan's convocation, especially considering there is no evidence that Faith harbors Brown's affinity for an exploration of evil.
An important element of the Puritan belief system is that, in addition to evil being physically present in their lives, Puritans believe that Satan can invade their dreams in order to work his evil; it is reasonable to conclude that Brown is the victim not of a physical encounter with evil but of a dream vision in which evil has invaded all aspects of his life, convincing him that everyone around him is as tainted as he is. Brown's curiosity—his dark heart—manifests itself in a dream vision that ruins his life ever afterward. Faith is unfortunate collateral damage.
What suggests Brown's forest journey represents a journey into his own heart?
Nathaniel Hawthorne's story "Young Goodman Brown" has several overtly supernatural elements. Its dreamlike and supernatural elements are the first clues that we should interpret the story allegorically. Our next general hint is the names of the characters. A protagonist named "Goodman" married to a wife named "Faith" suggests that the story is situated in the tradition of morality plays or allegories such as The Pilgrim's Progress, a classic work in the Puritan religious tradition which serves as the background to Hawthorne's story.
The next evidence we encounter is the prominent use of the word “heart” in the opening of the story. Faith, in the second paragraph, addresses her husband as “Dearest heart,” suggesting that her husband represents the body, mind, and heart to her, just as she represents Faith and the soul to him. Together, they constitute a complete human living in grace, but when Goodman abandons Faith, even temporarily, his heart and mind are led astray. Next, at a key transition point in the journey, when Goodman Brown overhears the Deacon and the minister, he experiences a “heavy sickness of his heart.” It is shortly after this that he appears to undergo a dramatic transformation; when he realizes that Faith appears to be part of the ungodly throng and is escaping him just as he left her, he chases after her in anguish and frenzy. In the forest, there was "nothing more frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown." This suggests that Goodman Brown, like the human heart, becomes monstrous without faith. For Hawthorne and his readers, human imperfection is grounded in original sin, handed down across generations from Adam and Eve. Thus, the fact that the “traveler,” who is likened to the Devil, takes on the appearance of Goodman’s ancestors is highly significant.
In his use of the sins of others to corrupt Goodman Brown, the Devil also suggests that the heart can lead us to damnation. Just as love for Faith can be a potential path to salvation, love or admiration for others can serve to lead us astray. If we think that those we care for are engaged in morally questionable acts, that can make us abandon hope for ourselves.
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