# Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Blinkist

What’s in it for me? A shadowy, supernatural story with serious meaning

What could a tale about magic and witchcraft teach us about ourselves? Well, quite a lot, it turns out. This dark allegorical tale delves into the themes of sin, hypocrisy, and the inherent evil in human nature, and provides a blistering critique of early American society and its strict moral codes. In particular, Hawthorne challenges the sanctimony and contradiction that he saw within the Puritan community – a strict Christian sect known for placing great emphasis on virtuous behavior and their fierce opposition to Catholicism.

Hawthorne was motivated to write this story by his great-great-grandfather’s involvement in the Salem witch trials, when Puritan religious extremism and superstition reached a murderous frenzy. In Hawthorne’s view, Puritan ideas about human nature were too superficial – we are far more complex beings than they gave us credit for. This story is about filling in some of the gaps that Puritans missed in their formulations of being human, and human being.

So let’s jump into this pocket-sized, fantastical short story and find out why Edgar Allen Poe and Herman Melville – author of the masterpiece Moby Dick – rated it so highly.

A mysterious journey into the forest

Hawthorne begins his story by thrusting us into the middle of a departure. As the sun retreats and dusk creeps over Salem Village, Young Goodman Brown leaves his home despite the protests and pleas of his wife, Faith. We don’t know where our main character is going, only that he is heading through a gloomy forest with an “evil purpose.” As the couple say their final goodbyes, Faith’s anguished face leads Goodman Brown to suspect she knows his motives – but no, he thinks, it would kill this “blessed angel” to know of them.

Making his way through the twilight gloom, supposing evil to lie behind every tree, suddenly the figure of a man described as wearing “grave and decent attire” appears before him. The man looks uncannily like Goodman Brown himself, and seems to have been expecting him. He radiates an indefinable enigmatic aura – one of quiet confidence and worldly knowledge. One of his only concrete characteristics is his staff, carved to look like a great black snake, and so intricate it seems to slither like a living serpent.

The two men walk on, and the darkness of night descends. The unnamed man says they still have far to go, and time is getting late. He urges Goodman Brown to take his serpent staff, saying they will arrive at their destination more quickly this way. Goodman Brown protests, and begins to lament his journey. He tells the man his family are “a race of honest men and good Christians,” and that he will be the first of his family to walk this path.

On the contrary, says the man. He knew Goodman Brown’s father, and helped him set fire to a Native American village. He knew Goodman Brown’s grandfather when he whipped a Quaker woman in the streets of Salem. Both were the mysterious man’s good friends, and he had many walks with them along the path that Goodman Brown is now treading.

Just as Goodman Brown begins to protest, to express his disbelief that these good, honest Puritans could commit such foul deeds, he sees Goody Cloyse – described in the story as a “pious and exemplary dame” who plays an active role in Salem’s religious activities – ahead of them. Goodman Brown hurries into the bushes to avoid letting Goody Cloyse see him in the company of a stranger. He watches the strange encounter between the two people, who seem to have some knowledge of each other; indeed, Goody Cloyse refers to the older man as “Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is”! Goodman Brown sees the man throw his staff at Goody Cloyse’s feet – and she vanishes.

ANALYSIS

The most important function of this story is to express the hypocrisy and naivety that Hawthorne saw in Puritan culture, and the author establishes this right from the start. Goodman Brown has a romantic image of himself, Goody Cloyse, and his ancestors as simple, God-fearing, law-abiding Christians – yet we know it is temptation that leads him to head into the forest for an “evil purpose” learn of the wicked deeds his forefathers committed, and witness the odd meeting of the man and Goody Cloyse. Hawthorne saw a disconnect between Puritan ideals and their appraisals of themselves on the one hand, and the reality of human nature on the other. We have a chilling capacity for evil, and are easily tempted creatures, the author implies.

A descent into evil

Soon after Goody Cloyse disappears, Goodman Brown hesitates. He tells the strange man that he doesn’t wish to continue on their journey, and the older man leaves him behind – first giving him a branch of maple that the man had plucked from a tree to use as a new walking stick. Goodman Brown, alone, still by the wayside, hears the sound of people on horseback approaching. Straining his ears, he manages to identify one of the voices as belonging to Deacon Gookin, another pious church goer and Brown’s spiritual advisor. Despairing at the revelation that his whole community has, in his words, “gone to the Devil,” he determines that, for his wife’s sake, he will stay true to God.

At this very moment, though, he hears Faith’s voice among the dark, rustling leaves. He screams her name, but gets no answer. Sure now that there is no good left in the world, he grimly decides to follow his journey to its conclusion. Mad with hopelessness, he grabs the maple walking staff and is rushed off, in a whirlwind, to his final destination.

Goodman Brown finds himself in a clearing surrounded by blazing pine trees, their orange glow lighting up a pagan altar. On the edge of the clearing is a mass of shadowy people, the dancing flames making them appear and then disappear.

“Bring forth the converts,” a dark voice cries out.

Goodman Brown feels himself step forward, because he feels a comradeship with these people, “by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart.”

Suddenly, a dark figure clad in robes welcomes Goodman Brown. The figure tells him to look around, and note all of the most respectable members of the Salem community standing there. The figure tells Brown to stop shrinking from his sin, and accept that, “evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness.”

As this is happening, Goodman Brown spots Faith among the new converts. As he cries out to her, “Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One,” a giant gust of wind extinguishes the entire scene.

ANALYSIS

In the second act of this story, the plot reaches a climax. We learn that all of Salem’s most respectable – and seemingly moral – residents are practitioners of black magic, witchcraft, and devil-worship. It is here that Hawthorne’s main theme of Puritan hypocrisy and double standards is most forcefully illustrated – inside all of us is the potential to be tempted and to commit evil, and until we possess a worldview that accepts this, we are destined to live shallow and insincere lives. Ideas of public morality and virtue rarely translate into our private lives and thoughts.

A sour, empty life

We next meet Goodman Brown the following morning, back in Salem. Everything in the village is as it should be: the “good old minister” is walking in the grounds of his church, composing his morning sermon. The sounds of Deacon Gookin praying in his home waft through the open window and into the street. Goody Cloyse is preaching to a child who has just delivered her fresh milk.

Goodman Brown wanders Salem, dazed and confused. Who were these people? How could they lead such despicable double lives? Could last night have been nothing but a dream? Maddened and bewildered, he whisks away the child that Goody Cloyse is preaching to, sure he is saving her from a demon. 

Then, just as he is turning a corner, he spots Faith. Overjoyed to see him, she skips toward him – but Goodman Brown looks at her sternly and passes by, ignoring her completely.

Goodman Brown spends the rest of his life a suspicious, cynical, and miserable man. Distrusting everyone, he shrinks into himself and into his pessimism. He cannot hear the words of the minister during church services, because Brown believes him to be a devil-worshiping pagan. He wakes in the night gripped by anxiety, and turns his back on his wife. And when he and his family sit down for prayer, he scowls and turns away.

And when Goodman Brown dies, the story tells us, “they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom.”

ANALYSIS

The final act of this short story illustrates the consequences of possessing a Puritan worldview. 

An uncompromising and overly high-minded view of the nature of humanity will inevitably leave one frustrated and discontent when illusions are shattered by what people are actually like. For the rest of his days, Goodman Brown could never be sure whether the events in the forest that night were a dream – but the mere possibility that his moral, religious community could behave in shameful ways was enough to crush his formerly happy Christian spirit.

Final summary

We meet Goodman Brown, a good Christian and resident of Salem village, on his way into the forest at night. We don’t know where he is going – only that there is something nefarious going on. Along the way, he meets other residents of Salem who live public lives of decency, religion, and morality. Brown knows them as good people.

He arrives at his destination to find a black magic ritual. Present is almost every member of the village – including his wife, Faith, whom he took for a pure and innocent soul. He cries out to her to resist the Devil and look to God – and the whole scene vanishes.

The next morning, Goodman Brown is unsure if the events of the previous night were real or a dream. However, his faith in the goodness of humanity, and Puritan morality, is forever shattered. He lives out the rest of his life a miserable, cynical man suspicious of everyone, including those closest to him.