Brown Good Man or Bad Man, show devilry in piety
Nathaniel Hawthorne's somewhat uncomfortable heritage as descendantof the strictest Puritans is evident in his excellent allegorical shortstory "Young Goodman Brown." The purpose of his story is to portray the wayin which religious piety itself may become a sort of devilry, and that evenone who perceives himself to have escaped the snares of the devil may inhis judgmental piety be doing the very work of the evil one. The story issimple enough: a faithful young Puritan is tempted by the devil, andagrees to meet him in the woods but refuses to go to far with him, untilone by one he sees how everyone he respected as a spiritual leader hasalready fallen to evil, at which point he wavers, and then finally rejectsSatan. Yet on returning to the real world, he carries with him theperception of all his fellows as having sold themselves to Satan, and thispoisons all his relationships and makes him unable to worship among them.Thus Hawthorne's purpose is fulfilled, in that he has shown how even inpiety (rejecting the devil) a man may fall into doing the devil's will byturning against the church and his fellow man. "On the Sabbath-day, whenthe congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen,
The devil speaks of his father and grandfather, saying "They weremy good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along thispath, and returned merrily after midnight. areall whom ye have reverenced from youth. So one must understand it not only asturning away from religion but also as coming closer to nature. The hand of evil is about to baptize them, when Brown suddenly andunexpectedly turns his back on evil -- or so it seems. " (Hawthorne) His grandfather hadapparently been tyrannical to a Quaker woman, and his father murdered manynon-combatant Indians in the war, and these murderous ways called intoquestion the goodness of their religion. It is even indicatedthat he died a sinner, for "They carved no hopeful verse upon histombstone; for his dying hour was gloom. This is when Faith appears, and even she is tainted by beingthere. So he must briefly leave hisreligion in order to entertain thoughts of evil, which is why he says tothe devil that "Faith kept me back awhile. Though he still lives with Faith, he takes no pleasure inher. His pride and disillusionmenthave stripped him of happiness, hope, and joy in God. 'Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!'"(Hawthorne) With these words, he awakes safely away from the devil. " Likewise, it is thoughts of hisfaith that make him determined not to go far with the devil. It is important to notice that Brown's slide into temptation isnot only presented as a path along which one must walk, which is a verytraditional image, but also represented as a pilgrimage away from thecivilized town and into the wild woods where he increasingly hears thesounds of animals and savages. The purpose of this story, to show devilry in piety, is so successfulbecause it works on many levels.
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