Excessive Pride in Young Goodman Brown :: Nathaniel Hawthorne, YGB

Nathaniel Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown is an allegory. Hawthornes moral story is told through the perversion of a religious leader, Goodman Brown. Goodman is a Puritan minister who lets his excessive pride interfere with his relations with the community after he meets with the devil. The result is that Goodman lives the rest of his life in exile at bottom his own community. Young Goodman Brown begins when Faith, Browns wife, asks him not to go on an errand. Goodman Brown says to his love and (my) Faith that this one night I must tarry remote from thee. When he says his love and his Faith, he is talking to his wife, exactly he is also talking to his faith to God. He is venturing into the woods to meet with the Devil, and by doing so, he leaves his unquestionable faith in God with his wife. He resolves that he will cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven. This is an example of the excessive pride because he feels that he ordure sin and meet with the Devil because of this promise that he made to himself. There is a tremendous irony to this promise because when Goodman Brown comes back at traverse he can no longer look at his wife with the same faith he had before. When Goodman Brown finally meets with the Devil, he declares that the reason he was late was because Faith kept me back awhile. This statement has a double meaning because his wife physically prevented him from being on time for his meeting with the devil, but his faith to God psychologically delayed his meeting with the devil. The Devil had with him a mental faculty that bore the likeness of a great black snake. The staff which looked like a snake is a reference to the snake in the story of Adam and eventide. The snake led Adam and Eve to their destruction by leading them to the Tree of Knowledge. The Adam and Eve story is similar to Goodman Brown in that they are both seeking unfathomable amounts of knowledge. Once Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge they were expelled from t heir paradise. The Devils staff eventually leads Goodman Brown to the Devils ceremony which destroys Goodman Browns faith in his fellow man, therefore expelling him from his utopia.