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Braeden Smith

Dr. Christopher Malone

English 3773

14 June 2021

The Role of Individual Belief in Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story Young Goodman Brown gives the first-person account of

Goodman Brown, a young Puritan who believed he had an encounter with the devil and his

followers late one night in the woods. As Brown narrates what happened that night, with the

people he encountered and the events he bore witness to, he relates his inner reflections which

call forward the nature of personal faith in the face of doubt and adversity. Using Brown’s

reliance on his community to provide and support his own beliefs and presenting humanity as a

singular mass with no inherent differences, Hawthorne addresses the importance of individual

devotion rather than communal zeal. With these devices, as well as with the emphasized

uncertainty regarding the reality of the events within the tale itself, Young Goodman Brown

addresses the effect personal belief may have on our lives.

Throughout the story, Goodman Brown beholds seemingly pious members of his Puritan

community consorting with the devil and at the story’s climax beholds them participating in a

ritual. Goody Clouse, “a very pious and exemplary dame…his moral and spiritual advisor…”

(350) has a friendly conversation with the devil on her way to this ritual. Likewise, Goodman

Brown overhears the minister and deacon Goodkin, two “…holy men…” (350) discussing their

eagerness in attendance and the vast array of people who will be present. Despite his own shock

and upset at seeing such esteemed persons being party to such acts, he never really questions his
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own presence there beyond continually, weakly, and uselessly insisting he must think of his wife

Faith. Instead, Goodman Brown is far more concerned with the hypocrisy and sin of his

community members. As he confronts the supposedly true nature of his Puritan community, he

reveals his own weak religious conviction as he begins “doubting whether there really was a

heaven above him.” (350) Brown’s focus on the conduct of others shows his focus does not lie

on his own increasing guilt in the transpiring events, or even his own personal belief, but rather

reveals his obsession with the piousness of others. Indeed, once he believes his own wife Faith to

be taking part in these events, he abandons any attempt at restraint and rushes headfirst into the

darkness. Once he finally reaches the site of the ritual and examines the crowd he wonders “But,

where is Faith?” (352), a reflection on both his reliance on others and, indirectly, his own lack of

personal belief.

This singular focus upon the conduct of others also reflects on the Puritan belief of the

elect, the idea that individuals are predestined to go to Heaven or Hell and that there is no true

way to determine which you are destined to. The Puritans tended to compensate for this

uncertainty by emphasizing public morality and strictly restraining your personal actions. As

seen in other works of Hawthorne, such as The Scarlett Letter or The Minister’s Black Veil, the

Puritans were very critical of anything outside their own norms and harshly judged those who

sinned. However, the ritual scene in Young Goodman Brown presents the supposedly pious

Puritans right alongside the wicked in a large, indistinct mass. First Goodman Brown numbers

the religious and respected people he recognizes,

“Among them… faces that would be seen, next day at the council-board of the province

and others which…looked devoutly heavenward…from the holiest pulpits in the land…

wives of honored husbands, and widows, a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of
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excellent repute…a score of the church members from Salem, famous for their especial

sanctity. Good old deacon Goodkin…and…his revered pastor.” (352)

Then, after numbering all the so-called good people he witnessed, Goodman Brown takes note of

the sinners and evildoers standing among them. “But, irreverently consorting with these grave,

reputable, and pious people…there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame,

wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes.” (353) No

differentiation exists in the crowd between the publicly pious Puritans and those of more

depraved inclinations. Brown himself states “It was strange to see, that the good shrank not from

the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints.” (352) This lack of distinction calls into

question Goodman Brown’s own beliefs about the dichotomy of good and evil. If his own

mentors of faith and religion take part in such sin freely among the wretched, is there truly any

distinction between right and wrong? The elect and condemned? As his own name suggests,

Brown takes a stand neither with the light or with the dark. He stands in the middle, a muddy,

clumped mess. With his faith being so reliant on the sanctity of his community, he thus reflects

their own confused and hypocritical nature. Without personal faith, Goodman Brown is relegated

to reflect the twisting uncertainty of his community’s beliefs.

Furthermore, the entire story can be understood as a product of Goodman Brown’s own

confrontation with personal belief. The end of the tale suggests that the dark sequence of events

that transpired that night may have been nothing more than Goodman Brown’s imagination. At

the climax of the ritual, he suddenly “found himself amid calm night and solitude” (354) before

returning the next morning “slowly into the streets of Salem village, staring around him like a

bewildered man” (354). All the events he experienced that night suddenly vanished like a dream

in the night. However, despite the implications of this, Goodman Brown personally believes that
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it all was real, and moves forward with life as if it were. We are told “A stern, a sad, a darkly

meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become, from the night of that fearful

dream.” (354) Goodman Brown’s belief in the reality of that night caused him to change his

entire worldview, regardless of whether it truly happened or not. This caused him to become a

bitter, cynical man doubting everyone around him. When the town’s congregation sang, he heard

“an anthem of sin” (354). When his family prayed, “he scowled, and muttered to himself, and

gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away.” (354) Ultimately, it matters little whether the events

of that dark night were real or not. Because Goodman Brown believed the event was real, he

treated it as such and did not allow its questionable reality to influence his response to it. This

gives the entire narrative a sense of questioning, as if it is challenging what we know as true with

the hint of doubt.

However, the events of that night caused far change for Goodman Brown than mere

bitterness. As previously stated, the Puritan community relies a great deal on the collective

conscious to maintain their faith. Goodman Brown himself was heavily reliant on this throughout

the story. Yet due to what he believed he witnessed that night, Young Goodman Brown choose

to split from this communal attitude and follows his own beliefs. No longer able to tolerate the

lack of faith he himself felt and witnessed at the ritual, or the idea that he was surrounded by

hypocrites and blasphemers, he instead elects to split from the social norms. He chooses to doubt

the sincerity and true faith of the people around him, up to and including his own wife Faith,

rather than continue to naively follow the beliefs of his community. For Goodmen Brown, the

result of that hazy night was not some fever dream or a reflection on the depravity of humanity.

For him, it was a revelation that he could not rely on anyone’s faith or truth besides his own.

Thus, he began to follow his own heart in a rejection of his community.

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Personal faith and belief constitute the foundations of human life. They are the basis by

which we judge actions, make choices, and make our livelihoods. In Young Goodman Brown,

Hawthorne asserts that we cannot rely on others for these personal convictions. To do so would

bind us to them, lure us into the belief that they have some higher knowledge that we lack and

ensnare us in a never-ending cycle of mimicry and judgement. Instead, we must find and hold

our own individual faith. Only once we have achieved this, a firm conviction of personal faith,

can we truly recognize truth. Young Goodman Brown may reflect on the nature of reality and

doubt, but the story’s most important aspect is its demand that we decide for ourselves whether

that night was real or not; a demand that we come up with our own belief.
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Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” The Norton Anthology of American

Literature. 9th ed., edited by Robert S. Levine, Norton, 2017, pp. 345-354