Young Goodman Brown is a story in which the proper morals the Puritans give way to sexual fantasy. In the beginning Brown leaves civilization to partake on a journey into evil. Journeying into a forest, which represents the unknown and the evil according to Puritan beliefs. Leaving behind his wife, Faith, the epitome of innocence, which is not what Brown's true soul desires. As he leaves his wife, her begging him not to go leads to his thoughts about how he's glad she doesn't know what his journey entails, making the reader wonder what sort of evil he had planned for the future. Perhaps having thoughts or fantasies of sexual encounters, going to a forest for something like a prostitute, or the forest symbolizing the evil of infidelity or a symbolic embodiment of a whore.
             He desires the unrefined, the dark, and the witchlike. As Brown approached the entrance to the forest, he encounters a dark being appearing aesthetically similar to himself, only older. This dark figure is Brown's true subconscious, and maybe even his soul, which is touring him through the sexual experience of the forest. As he enters into the forest, Brown speaks of all the good men who never went as deep into the forest and at that moment Goody Cloyse, the woman who taught Brown catechism, appears. Brown's first sexually immoral thought was with her. Although an old woman now, she evokes thoughts Brown had when he was younger. The dark figure then gives her his writing stick, and she flies off cackling. To Brown, giving her his writing stick is like having sex, and the cackling adds to the experience a sexual fetish of sleeping with a witch. The point about misplacing her broomstick or someone else stealing it could be considered a phallic symbol. Goodman Brown then !
             states, "that woman taught me my catechism," and the story states that there is a world of meaning in that comment. First, one must not read it
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