are shown to be almost impossible to
             uphold. Even the most pious of religious leaders, community elders, and
             Goodman Brown's wife, Faith, are sometimes tempted and fallen. It is
             Goodman Brown's inability to forgive them their transgressions that marks
             the most potent irony in the story, however. He spends the remainder of
             his life in gloom and loneliness, rejecting the very faith that underlies
             the Puritan belief. In rejecting his loved ones, Brown rejects the
             Christian ideas of redemption and forgiveness of sin. He chooses to judge
             and reject his loved ones for their sin, rather than showing compassion and
             It is in Young Goodman Brown's rejection of his faith that Hawthorne
             clearly shows the heart of the Puritan basis of social stratification.
             Hawthorne seems to argue that the Puritan religion's inability to forgive
             ultimately dooms believers to see the world only in terms of the pious and
             the fallen. In Puritan eyes, the sinful natures of all ar
             ...