"Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorn is an excellent short story telling of Young Goodman Brown's (the main character) religious trials and tribulations. If a person had seen the minister of a church playing poker at a neighbor's house, would he/she reconsider his/her faith and deem him a hoax? Possibly. Society has a set of ideals placed upon religious leaders and if they should sway away from the ideals, society will damn them. Hawthorne attacks Puritanism in this short story through the struggles between good and evil, symbolism, and blasphemy of the church.
             Young Goodman Brown struggles often in the story between good and evil. In the beginning of the story Brown struggles with the dilemma of going to meet with the devil and his wife Faith asking, "Pray, tarry with me this night, dear husband." Upon meeting the devil at the beginning of the forest trail, Brown states, "Faith kept me back awhile." The reader can look either at "Faith" as his wife or "Faith" as in his religious belief. Although the story claims that "Faith" is his wife, the religious side is that Brown is struggling between meeting with the devil or keeping to his faith and staying true to God. At midpoint in the journey, Brown and the devil come upon Goody Cloyse, the catechism teacher. Goody is not surprised to see the devil; in fact, she carries on a conversation with him and uses his staff to whisk her away to his meeting of worship. Brown is outraged that his catechism teacher is mingling with the devil and demands, "Not another step will I budge." The devil asks Brown to rest awhile and think about his anger, and if Brown decides to continue the journey, he may use the staff that the devil left at his feet to use in traveling faster to the meeting. As Brown is sitting and gloating in his accomplishment of admonishing the
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