suggest that he is the devil; more to the point, he encounters people that he considers religious mentors. Seeing, or believing that he is seeing, some of the most pious people from his religious community engaging in demonic worship distorts Brown's thinking. From this point forward, he believes that no one in his Puritan life is what they appear to be. He becomes obsessed with the idea that everyone has hidden sins and that the devil has taken control of all that he has deemed holy. Consequently, he becomes solitary, forbidding, and judgmental, and he lives a miserable life.

Young Goodman Brown's view of sin is that it is an entirely binary matter. He is unable to accept that people can commit sins from time to time and yet live lives that are faithful and moral. His distorted thinking reflects the repugnance that Nathaniel Hawthorne felt for the religious attitudes of his Puritan forebearers. Their rigidity and hypocrisy brought down the community of Salem, and young Goodman Brown is meant to exemplify how it happened.

An essay explaining Young Goodman Brown's view of sin is an interesting assignment. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, Young Goodman Brown becomes disillusioned when he sees the people of his village, his beloved young wife included, engaged in devil worship. It is unclear whether the scene is real or an illusion. Does the devil simulate this event to persuade him that everyone he knows, loves and respects worships the fallen angel? Most likely the scene is a metaphor for how vulnerable every human being is to some degree of temptation.

Nevertheless, as a result of what the devil shows him, Young Goodman Brown loses all faith in humanity. This is the key to his becoming a solemn and gloomy man who sees sin everywhere and in everyone. As a result, he loses the love of those around him as his view of sin is that it is pervasive.

Hawthorne might be saying in a satirical way that everyone has the capacity for evil to some extent. The story, however, exaggerates the human capacity for sin by failing to distinguish between various levels of evil. For instance, there is a big difference between telling a lie or gossiping versus some of the sins described in the story. Specifically, the devil describes adultery, murder and infanticide, saying,

How many a woman, eager for widow's weeds, has given her husband a drink at bed-time, and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youth have made haste to inherit their father's wealth; and how fair damsels...have dug little graves in the garden.

Young Goodman Brown also fails to distinguish between different levels of evil. He sees all people as capable of the worst type of sins and loses his understanding of the goodness that is also inherent in most of the people he knows.