What is the main theme of “Young Goodman Brown?”

Question

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is a story that many high school and early college English classes will have students read and analyze, due to its symbolism, setting, and Hawthorne’s formal but fairly accessible writing style. So what does arguably his most famous story have to say?

Answer 1

Hawthorne had distant relatives who participated in the Salem Witch Trials, probably the most famous witch trials of all time. While Hawthorne himself was not a particularly religious person, he was fascinated by his family’s involvement in the pointless execution of innocent women fueled by religious hysteria. As such, “Young Goodman Brown” is a response to the religious hysteria that marked American Colonial society. 

The British Colonists were Puritans, an extremely orthodox Christian society that believed in a wrathful God who would send them to Hell for even the slightest sin. Refer to Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon to see the kind of rhetoric that was taught in their churches. Puritans had to thank God for everything that happened in their lives, good or bad, since neglecting their prayers for even a day could doom them to damnation. 

When something bad happened to the Puritans, crop failure, disappearances etc., they believed either God did it to them as a part of some greater plan, or that there was some kind of dark magic at play. They pinned the blame on their neighbors for “acting strange,” especially women, who were often accused of being witches and executed for crimes they supposedly had some kind of supernatural involvement in. As you can see, they let religious fear control their lives and blind them to logic, especially thanks to living in a dangerous and uncharted land like New England at the time. 

“Young Goodman Brown” comments on this religious hysteria by showing just how much it can damage someone. Goodman Brown is a perfectly happy man with a beautiful wife named Faith at the beginning of the story. However, his encounter with the Stranger in the woods, highly implied to be Satan or one of his disciples, changes him completely. He finds out that just about everyone in town, an old woman, the town priest, and his own wife, are in league with Satan. However, whether this actually happened or not is ambiguous, as he wakes up in the middle of the woods the next morning with no sign of anyone around. The story ends with him turning into a dour, unfriendly person who shuns everyone, even Faith, believing them all to be secretly evil. He dies a lonely old curmudgeon, with nobody able to think of anything uplifting to put on his gravestone. 

While the story can be read as a straightforward supernatural horror story about an evil cult, it overall serves as a metaphor for how living in constant religious fear can completely destroy one’s character. While being religious is no issue and can even enrich one’s life, believing that every moment of every day has to be spent constantly on high alert for any kind of sin will leave a person sad, unfriendly, paranoid, and overall drained. This kind of lifestyle is exactly what happened to many of the Puritans, who let fear of God control their lives to the point of accusing their neighbors of witchcraft and condemning them to death.