Interpretation of Evil Human Nature
"Young Goodman Brown" is often characterized as an allegory about the recognition of evil and depravity as the nature of humanity.[5] Much of Hawthorne's fiction, such as The Scarlet Letter, is set in 17th-century colonial America, particularly Salem Village. Language of the period is used to enhance the setting. Hawthorne gives the characters specific names that depict abstract pure and wholesome beliefs, such as "Young Goodman Brown" and "Faith". The characters' names ultimately serve as a paradox in the conclusion of the story. The inclusion of this technique was to provide a definite contrast and irony. Hawthorne aims to critique the ideals of Puritan society and express his disdain for it, thus illustrating the difference between the appearance of those in society and their true identities.[6][7][8]
Literary scholar Walter Shear writes that Hawthorne structured the story in three parts. The first part shows Goodman Brown at his home in his village integrated in his society. The second part of the story is an extended dreamlike/nightmare sequence in the forest for a single night. The third part shows his return to society and to his home, yet he is so profoundly changed that in rejecting the greeting of his wife Faith, Hawthorne shows Goodman Brown has lost faith and rejected the tenets of his Puritan world during the course of the night.[9]
The story is about Brown's loss of faith as one of the elect, according to scholar Jane Eberwein. Believing himself to be of the elect, Goodman Brown falls into self-doubt after three months of marriage which to him represents sin and depravity as opposed to salvation. His journey to the forest is symbolic of Christian "self-exploration" in which doubt immediately supplants faith. At the end of the forest experience he loses his wife Faith, his faith in salvation, and his faith in human goodness.[6]
Interpretation of Impossible Perfection
One interpretation of the text is as an allegory to emphasize how perfection as impossible, through interactions in the forest. The author introduces the shadowy figure as an "elder person as simply clad as a younger, [with] an indescribable air of one who knew the world". The author depicts this evil figure as not only similar to Goodman Brown, but also more educated in his age. After establishing the dark figure’s legitimacy, he delivers a message that only the young and naïve believe that perfection can be achieved. The devil claims to have helped his father "set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's war." By shattering Young Goodman Brown's conception that his fathers were paragons of Puritan ideals, Young Goodman Brown began his slow descent until his "dying hour of gloom," setting up a perspective that perfection is merely an illusion by showing how believers set themselves up for a sad death. Similarly, the futility of perfection can also be ascertained at the final Devil meeting. The first thing Goodman Brown hears when he arrives is "a familiar [tune] in the choir of the village meetinghouse." This comparison brings to mind a setting in which the piety and perfection preached by the church contrasts the reality of human imperfection.[10] True to its set up, the dark sable figure presumed to be the devil delivers a conversion speech for the Goodman Brown by lecturing how Puritans "shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. ... This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households." By highlighting the "wanton words" and "secret deeds" that Puritans conceal in fear of being found out,[11] the devil elucidates the hypocrisy that the Puritans center their life upon; indeed, Young Goodman Brown's world shatters when he realizes that what appears to be "lives of righteousness" are actually tainted by atrocious sin. Overall, the shadowy figure and the aura of the final demon meeting can imply an interpretation that perfection is simply a myth, and those in pursuit of it do so out of naivety of reality.
