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

Nathaniel Hawthornes Young Goodman chocolate-brown is an allegory. Hawthornes moral story is told through the perversion of a unearthly leader, Goodman Brown. Goodman is a Puritan minister who lets his excessive pride interfere with his dealings with the community after he tincts with the devil. The result is that Goodman lives the rest of his life in exile within 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 away from thee. When he says his love and his Faith, he is talking to his wife, but he is also talking to his faith to God. He is venturing into the woods to meet with the chew up, 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 sample of the excessive pride because he feels that he can sin and meet with the Devil because of this promise that he made to himself. There is a abominable irony to this promise because when Goodman Brown comes back at dawn he can no longer look at his wife with the alike(p) 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 over meaning because his wife physically prevented him from being on time for his showdown with the devil, but his faith to God psychologically delayed his meeting with the devil. The Devil had with him a staff that bore the likeness of a great ominous snake. The staff which looked like a snake is a beginning to the snake in the story of ten and eventide. The snake led Adam and Eve to their destruction by leading them to the Tree of swearingship. The Adam and Eve story is similar to Goodman Brown in that they are both seek unfathomable amounts of knowledge. Once Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge they were expelled from their 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.