Young goodman Brown

Young Goodman Brown portrays truly the human condition, but only half of it. He caught the evil that resides in everyone, and interestingly enough, he shows how evil is a perversion or corruption of the good. But Hawthorne shows us the problem and far from resolving it, throws doubt on its existence. His ending implies that when one rejects evil, the problem is with the beholder, not the evil. A better understanding is within the Puritan doctrine Hawthorne neglected.

Everyone in Young Goodman Brown is tainted by evil, symbolized by the witch-meeting. None is exempt: the old lady who taught Brown his catechism, the pastor, the deacon, Brown's father and grandfather (whom the man with the snake-staff implied had been attending meetings of the coven as they prosecuted witches in their public life), and even his own wife, Faith, whom Brown had left at home at the narrative's opening. Hawthorne probably intends this to reflect the doctrine of original sin, which does, in fact, hold that "there is none righteous, no, not one," and "the heart is deceitful above all else and is desperately wicked."

But Hawthorne undercuts this position in three ways. First, he distances himself by implying that the witch-meeting may only have been a dream of Brown. The dream-frame is a classic medieval method for an author to promulgate information that may otherwise be rejected. Second, the only consequences of any of these deeds are psychological ones to Brown himself. No other character shows any remorse or indeed any knowledge of witch-meetings. Every other character continues with their outwardly righteous lives. Only Brown is haunted to his death by the perversions and evil he saw that night in the woods. Finally, everyone is portrayed as living happily ever after unless he refuses to get involved in sorcery. This distancing of oneself from evil--not the getting close to it in the first place--seems to be the trouble. He subtly reinforces that by naming Brown's wife "Faith" (and making of a point of the fact she is aptly named) and letting her attend the meeting as well. All of Christian faith is implicated with the wife's witchcraft, however unwilling it may be. And that is a profouundly anti-Biblical message.

Yet Hawthorne accurately describes the nature of evil, at least as St. Augustine and other Christian thinkers have described it. Augustine is clear in his Confessions that evil is not an equal and opposite entity to good, but is an absence or perversion of good. The coven is convened near a large rock which looks like a natural altar or pulpit. In the Old Testament, the Jews were commanded to make an altar of uncut stones. When an apparition appears before this stone, he looks like a Puritan minister. The sorcerers do not sing their own songs, but a Christian hymn with rewritten lyrics. Indeed, almost nothing they do is not, in some sense, like something a Christian would do.

But Hawthorne goes a step further. Evil doesn't just consist of good things made bad, but is given the power of poisoning things which are good. After the night of the story, his life is utter despair. Certainly, evil tries to do precisely that, but Hawthorne neglects to mention that God is more than a match for the devil and all his apprentices. The entire point of Puritan doctrine is that man is sinful but God both can and will redeem anyone who comes to Him. This theme is strongly in evidence in Edward's Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. God hates sin: very true. God has entire power to cast sinners into damnation: also true. But it also pleases God to extend the offer of salvation to these sinners.

In the last day, those who do evil and those who are under grace will be separated for punishment and joy. In Hawthorne's tale, the division is between those who do evil and those who reject it, and the rejector is the one who lives and dies in misery.