Losing Faith: The Unforeseen Corruption
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is the classic horror tale of a young man, Brown, who takes a surreptitious journey into a forest where he is met by a strange man whose intentions are just as mysterious and the young man’s journey. Simple as this short story may seem to some, there is a rather blatant and complex allegory confronting the fundaments and moral standings of religion. While Brown is to stand as representative to those who struggle with and even succumb to the fight to keep one’s faith in a world riddled with sin and corruption upon inevitable revelation, the eerie journey depicts the core of failed religion – the religious hypocrisy, the myth of righteousness amongst religious authorities, and the inescapably flawed nature of mankind which it desperately attempts to suppress and forbid. In the end, the young Goodman Brown suffers a rude awakening at the hands of a dreadfully wise …show more content…
Before Brown departs from his wife, he questions her faith in him, asking, “dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months married?” (79). While Hawthorne has made young Goodman Brown’s age range relatively apparent, it may be determined that the length of Brown’s marriage to Faith parallels his time committed to his religious faith – that time being quite brief. Leaving Faith behind as he sets off on his excursion, he distances himself from his personal faith. As he treks along, he finds himself further and further from Faith, fretting for her heart and wanting desperately to return to her though he continues onward through the forest – tempted along by his strange companion. Mentions of Faith lesson once Brown wanders deeper into the forest, only a few times taking a moment to remember his poor Faith in the midst of the stranger’s vexing
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is the classic horror tale of a young man, Brown, who takes a surreptitious journey into a forest where he is met by a strange man whose intentions are just as mysterious and the young man’s journey. Simple as this short story may seem to some, there is a rather blatant and complex allegory confronting the fundaments and moral standings of religion. While Brown is to stand as representative to those who struggle with and even succumb to the fight to keep one’s faith in a world riddled with sin and corruption upon inevitable revelation, the eerie journey depicts the core of failed religion – the religious hypocrisy, the myth of righteousness amongst religious authorities, and the inescapably flawed nature of mankind which it desperately attempts to suppress and forbid. In the end, the young Goodman Brown suffers a rude awakening at the hands of a dreadfully wise …show more content…
Before Brown departs from his wife, he questions her faith in him, asking, “dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months married?” (79). While Hawthorne has made young Goodman Brown’s age range relatively apparent, it may be determined that the length of Brown’s marriage to Faith parallels his time committed to his religious faith – that time being quite brief. Leaving Faith behind as he sets off on his excursion, he distances himself from his personal faith. As he treks along, he finds himself further and further from Faith, fretting for her heart and wanting desperately to return to her though he continues onward through the forest – tempted along by his strange companion. Mentions of Faith lesson once Brown wanders deeper into the forest, only a few times taking a moment to remember his poor Faith in the midst of the stranger’s vexing