The Decent To Apathy In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown
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The Decent to Apathy
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a nineteenth century writer who published, “Young Goodman Brown” as a way to convey the close mindedness and inherent contradictions the Puritans, which his ancestors were, in their worship. The short story involves the main character, Goodman Brown, going into the forbidden woods with an old man who is revealed to be the devil and tells Brown of the sins his town’s leaders and esteemed members committed through witchcraft and Satanism. “Young Goodman Brown” is an analogy of a man’s loss of faith through the character’s decent into mistrust due to his journey into the woods. At the beginning Brown is described as comforting his wife, Faith, who worried about his trek into the woods. His wife is a main symbol of his religious faith and he begins to lose her and it from the line “he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a…show more content… As he began his walk with the traveler, the man told him that Brown’s father and grandfather has came to the devil in order to do great sins and that they were his “…good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path…” (399). Now this shook Brown’s belief in that his own flesh and blood, who he believed to be among the best of the Puritans who came to the New World, had an ongoing relationship with the devil. Another person from his town who managed to stun him was Goody Cloyse’s appearance. She was a woman who had taught Brown his prayers when he was younger and he was shocked when she talks with the devil and knows the rituals. Hawthorne adds on page 401 when Brown says “that old woman taught me my catechism,’ said the young man; and there was a world of meaning in this simple comment.” Brown has realized that the people he truly believed to be the best Puritans were the worst that their religion