The tone of this story
is serious and grim, even ominous. When the devil admits his acquaintance with the Brown family,
he talks about helping young Goodman Brown's grandfather "[lash] the Quaker woman so
smartly," and how he brought his "father a pitch-pine knot [...] to set fire to an
Indian village." Word choices like lash and set
fire definitely solemnize the tone, as does the repeated use of the word
serpent or snake to refer to the devil's staff. A
description of Goody Cloyse's laugh as being a "cackle"a word choice very much
associated with witchesadds to the ominous tone as well.
When Goodman Brown
arrives at the witches' Sabbath, "there could be nothing more frightful than [his] figure
[...]. On he flew, among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now
giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy [...]." Words such as
frightful, frenzied, and
blasphemy are scary words, words that paint Goodman Brown as a fiend
himself, and they lead to the idea that the devil is already "rag[ing]" in his breast:
a subject Hawthorne treats most seriously with words such as these.
Finally,
Hawthorne's description of Goodman Brown's final years as a "stern, a sad, a darkly
meditative, distrustful, if not a desperate man" also confirm the grave tone. There is no
happy ending, no resumption of faith, as "he shrank from the bosom of Faith," his
wife, for the remainder of his life, and "his dying hour was gloom." Nothing in the
story permits even a ray of light. Goodman Brown becomes so hardened by his suspicion of
everyone around him that he dies without faith and without hope. Such an ending, with such word
choices, is grim indeed.
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