At the
beginning of the story,is presented as a loving husband. He refers to his wife as "a
blessed angel on earth" and is sad to have to leave her. Young Goodman Brown is also
presented, at the beginning of the story, as one struggling to resist the temptations of
evil.
Indeed, he follows the devil into the dark woods, and the further he
journeys into the woods, the further he moves away from his Christian faith. This idea is
emphasized by the fact that his wife is named "Faith." However, Young Goodman Brown
does try to resist the devil. He resolves repeatedly to turn back and return to his wife and
"cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven."
At the end of the
story, Young Goodman Brown is without hope altogether. He has seen, in the woods, too much evil
and too much hypocrisy to ever be happy again. He has seen elders of the church, pious teachers
of the catechism, and even his own wife among the devil's congregation. The devil has thus
revealed to Young Goodman Brown the supposed truth that "Evil is the nature of
mankind."
The devil affects this change in Young Goodman Brown, from
hope to hopelessness and from faith to faithfulness, because he shows him that all those people
he has "reverenced from youth," and "deemed...holier" than himself, are not
holy at all, but sinful and corrupt. When Young Goodman Brown believed these people to be holy,
he "shrank from [his] own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness." Now
that he no longer has that righteousness as a contrast, or an example, he becomes hopeless and
miserable.
At the beginning of the story, Young Goodman Brown had some faith
in the goodness of people, personified in the figure of his loving wife. By the end of the
story, the devil has taken this faith from him. Thus, when Young Goodman Brown dies, he is
"borne to his grave a hoary corpse" and, we are told, "his dying hour [is]
gloom."
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