Hypocrisy And Imagery In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown
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On the outside it is seen that Puritans crush any aspiration of adventure and creativity, but what’s perceived on the outside is not always the case behind closed doors. Young Goodman Brown is a pure man until one day he decides to adventure into the dreary forest. He walks with the devil and apprehends everyone that he thought was pure wasn’t. The day eternally revolutionized his life and faith. In the short story “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne employs the symbolism and imagery of the sinister forest, the mysterious Goody Cloyse, and the unconventional ceremony to illustrate the theme of hypocrisy.
From the beginning the decision to engage into the forest was something people of his faith were not to do. The second traveler stated, “Take my staff, if you are so soon weary.” (Hawthorne 2) Goodman Brown faced a great deal of temptation in the forest. Temptation was the reason that religious people like him were not to travel into the forest at night. In the forest Goodman Brown comes to the realization that people of his kind have sinned and gone against their ways, the ways they are expected to be following. The second traveler told Goodman Brown, “The…show more content… Brown heard the hymns in the forest … “[and] appeared faces that would be seen next day at the council board of the province, and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land.” (6) Even the devout of human beings were there in the forest and even at the ceremony. All of Brown’s life he witnessed these preeminent people in his religion doing right. One day in the forest while he’s sinning and going against his ways, he realizes that no one is irreproachable and they are all evil. They have been professing lies and telling others to be something that they can’t even do. These people are the definition of