Response to Young Goodman Brown

I really enjoyed Nathanial Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” which surprised me since I was not a huge fan of The Scarlet Letter.  I think Hawthorne does a good job at highlighting the high and fairly impossible expectations of the Puritans. Everyone sins, everyone makes mistakes; it is unreasonable to assume that people are perfect and never sin.  Most people have a desire, at some point in their lives, to break the rules a little bit, to not be practical for once, and to do something that is completely irrational.  Some people act on these desires; others do not.  Hawthorne illustrates an interesting scenario to expose the hypocrisy of Puritan society. Everyone that Goodman Brown believed would scorn the Devil, was at the meeting place deep in the woods.  The deacon, the “saintly minister,” his wife, ironically named Faith, every person that he believed was “good” and “sinless” in his society, did not live up to his expectations or to their “day-time” façade.  Every single person struggles with sin.  I guarantee that at some point in a person’s lifetime, they will succumb to peer-pressure, or give in and do the wrong thing.  The Puritan’s “pious” lifestyle is unreasonable and frankly is a farce. No one is that perfect, as Goodman Brown finds out.  It makes me wonder how well I really know the people around me.  The people whose lives from the outside may look and seem perfect,   may really just be putting on a show for the world.  I think it is extremely interesting that Goodman Brown is so appalled by the other people at the Devil’s meeting place, but fails to address the fact that he is in the fault just as much as the others. Faith tried to make him stay home, he refused. There were multiple opportunities that he could have gone home, he didn’t.  It seems even more hypocritical that Goodman Brown can return to the Puritan society and scorn and judge his neighbors, without accepting the fact that he too was tempted and succumbed to the Devil. Maybe, at the last second he tried to save his wife from the Devil and  turned away from the evil one, but he walked himself to the meeting…no one dragged him. I think that this is a huge criticism of the harsh judgments and actions associated with the Puritans.  They are quick to blame others for their sins (once other’s imperfections are exposed) but refuse to look at their own.  Maybe the reason the Puritans were so set on blaming other people and exposing their “unchristian ways”, was so that they could hide their own sins and imperfections. Now I’m rambling, but I still find the Puritan lifestyle fascinating.