YOUNG
YOUNGAn allegory is a work of fiction where all the elements are
subservient to a single theme by designating them as symbols of
abstract concepts in order to portray that theme. The interaction
between these symbols creates an explicit statement on human
nature or human relationships, usually in moral, religious, or
political terms. In “Young Goodman Brown”, Nathaniel Hawthorne
creates an allegory that encompasses the whole of this
definition.
The most obvious example of Hawthorne’s designation of
characters into symbols for the portrayal of the theme is in the
names of the story’s characters: Young Goodman Brown, Faith,
Goody Cloyse. The names are either ironic, with Goody Cloyse
turning out to be a witch, or literal, with Faith blatently
representing faith(Hawthorne 1991, 50). So when Young Goodman
Brown speaks of his wife as “Poor little Faith” by which he’ll
rise to heaven by clinging to her skirts(Hawthorne 1991, 51), the
author is revealing the nature of Goodman Brown’s own faith:
fragile and distinct from his own self.
The appearance of characters are also acts of symbolism for
telling the allegory. Goodman Brown’s companion is identified as
the Devil by his walking staff, carved in the form of a snake.
Martha Carrier, the consort of the Devil, is said to be a
“rampant hag”(Hawthorne 1991, 57). Deacon Goodkin and the
minister ride on horseback denoting their higher social standing,
and their conversation reveals to Goodman Brown that evil has
infected the highest reaches of power everywhere in New England.
And it is no coincidence that the Devil takes the form of Goodman
Brown’s grandfather, for it is the Devil that describes how he
helped the Brown’s to commit acts of intolerance and genocide
against Quakers and Indians. The sins of the fathers, symbolized
in the Devil’s appearance, come to disillusion Young Goodman
Brown.
Even material objects take on symbolic life. The Devil keeps
asking Goodman Brown to take his staff to aid in his walking. And
when Goodman Brown does take a maple stick that the Devil
fashioned for him, it speeds him down the forest path, bringing
him into such a frenzy that “there could be nothing more
frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown” in his righteous
fury(Hawthorne 1991, 55). Time is also symbolized. Young Goodman
Brown journeys out at sunset, representing the end of his youth
and the coming gloom of his “maturity”.
The symbolism most important to the allegory in “Young
Goodman Brown” is that of the natural world. The sky symbolizes
“heaven above” to Goodman Brown, and with its darkening by the
cloud of “a confused and doubtful sound of voices”, Goodman Brown
feels all hope in faith lost. The wind likewise takes on symbolic
life in laughing in scorn at Goodman Brown’s indignation by its
“frightful sounds- the creaking of trees, the howling of wild
beasts, and the yell of Indians”(Hawthorne 1991, 55). However,
the most significant symbolism of the natural world is in how
Hawthorne characterizes the forest.
The setting for “Young Goodman Brown” is around the early
eighteenth century, during the Age of Reason, when nature was
looked upon as corrupt and vulgar, something to be held
subservient to logic. However, during the time of Hawthorne, the
Age of Romanticism, nature had come to be see as pure and noble.
Hawthorne portrays nature from the viewpoint of the Age of
Reason, but the irony of the story is Romantic: Young Goodman
Brown’s downfall lies not in the truth that human nature,
symbolized in the natural world, is inherently evil, but in that
he takes this to be true.
To demonstrate this irony, Hawthorne takes the traditional
Puritan view of the untamed New England forest. To them, the
forest was not simply a physical wilderness but also a wilderness
of the soul: full of darkness, wild beasts, and “a devilish
Indian behind every tree”(Hawthorne 1991, 51). To the Puritans,
the wilderness was a savage place, that by conquering it and its
inhabitants, they had symbolically conquered human nature and
become more divine. Hawthorne takes this myth and turns it upside
down: by seeking to conquer nature, by seeing it as purely evil,
Goodman Brown becomes less human.
In the story, the forest is symbolized as a dark mirror
image of Goodman Brown’s Salem village. The pious villagers that
he has known in Salem become minions of the Devil in the forest,
meeting in congregation for a black mass held in a naturally-
formed chapel: “At one extremity of an open space, hemmed in by
the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude,
natural resemblance either to an altar or a pulpit, and
surrounded by four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems
untouched, like candles at an evening meeting”(Hawthorne 1991,
56). By mingling with “the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the
howling beasts, and every other voice of the unconcerted
wilderness”, the people of the village pay homage to the
Devil(Hawthorne 1991, 57). Here, the villagers are told by the
Devil to look upon each other and reveal their true character.
So the forest, for its chaotic, dark aspect which eludes logic,
is symbolized as human nature: “Evil is the nature of
mankind”(Hawthorne 1991, 57). This becomes Goodman Brown’s view
when he loses Faith, faith in his fellow man.
So, in allegorical terms, in leaving behind his wife Faith
to venture out into the forest at sunset, Young Goodman Brown
loses his own faith in the goodness of mankind and thus his naive
youth, witnesses the dark nature of Man which turns him sour and
distrustful of all. As can be seen, everything in the story is
subservient to this theme of betrayal of youthful optimism and
the resulting descent into matured yet corrupt pessimism. The
characters have no real life of their own: they are symbols first
and foremost.