Salvation Comes by Keeping Faith: An Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”

This paper was written sometime in 2002.
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  The Holy Bible, which was probably the most important text to the Puritans, declares that a woman is “saved through childbearing–if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety” (1 Timothy 9-15). Nathaniel Hawthorne, a nineteenth century romantic writer, explored the theme of salvation by faith in his short story, “Young Goodman Brown.” The story contains literary elements, such as symbol and personification that help to elucidate the process of faith and its subsequent process of sanctification that might have been in the mindscape of some Puritan men and women.
    Sanctification is a religious term that means “to consecrate, to make holy or to purify.” It is a sort-of spiritual cleansing, a washing away of a person’s sins after accepting as truth the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ. Today, when a person becomes a Christian, he or she takes a sacred oath to obey the laws of God. This is how the Christian proves that he loves God. In return, God blesses the faithful Christian with His love, which is an overpowering force of goodness within the heart of the Christian. It is a heavenly state wherein the faithful is “heaved up” into the realm of happiness. Because of his or her faith, the trusting Christian becomes a servant ready to reap the rewards of providence. Presumably, the Puritans believed the same process to be an important part of their religious life. Without faith, sanctification could not be possible.
    In “Young Goodman Brown,” a Puritan husband meets an ambiguous character in the wood, who forces him to question the fidelity of his wife, Faith. In this work, Hawthorne, a man who persistently reflected upon his own ancestor’s dealings with the devil (he was the great-great grandson of a judge who persecuted women for witchcraft) seems to explore the process of sanctification by which one comes to have faith in a higher power and how one can flee the bondage of sin.
     The Puritans were a group of people trying to escape oppressive Anglican persecution. One of their points of contention was that (wo)mankind can attain salvation by having faith in God and that salvation did not come through works or by the sanction of men, (an institution such as the Church of England). They believed The Geneva Bible was the divinely inspired Word of God, which meant that everything in it was the absolute truth. Therefore, it is consistent to assume the Puritans in Hawthorne’s works believed that “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrew 11:1). In other words, in order to be considered a faithful servant of God, a Puritan such as Goodman Brown must not waver between belief and disbelief. The very color of his name, neither black nor white, but somewhere in between seems to suggest he is in-between being faithful and unfaithful.
     In this sense, Faith is a personification of the concept of biblical faith in “Young Goodman Brown.” It is the object with which Brown struggles. In the literal sense, Faith is the flesh and blood wife of Mr. Brown. She embodies everything he cares for, everything he loves. She is his wife. According to the Puritans, when a man and woman join in the sacrament of marriage, they become one flesh, one person; their identities merge. They have both committed to a bondage to one another, what the Bible calls “being yoked.” Though some may argue this kind of bondage to be imprisoning, most believing Christians know that this is a type of bondage that is merely restricting, built upon the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love.
     In the figurative sense, Faith serves as a symbol to the biblical concept of faith, the assured confidence that God’s grace is real and a blessing conferred upon mankind for the redemption of sin. It isn’t a prison but a paradise where the walls of love protect inhabitants from the lures and snares of evil. Unfortunately, though, for those who waver, like Brown, they have not yet found the assurance needed to be considered one of God’s elect for salvation. Instead of trusting in God, the waverer is in a sense, still in bondage to distrust and doubt. In modern evangelical terms, he is still in bondage to sin, the Devil’s weapon of manipulation.
     The theme of this literature course was to focus on “captivity narratives,” wherein Puritan “wom[e]n st[oo]d passively under the strokes of evil, awaiting rescue by the grace of God” (Kirby) as if there should be some question to the Puritan avenue of salvation. In “Young Goodman Brown,” the husband, after seeing his wife’s ribbons in the woods, seems to question his “Faith.” He seemingly “falls” to evil within the woods. He doesn’t literally fall unto the weight of gravity per se, but the gravity of sin. He falls out of heavenly faith, that place of “heaved up happiness and contentment” into the hellish realm of doubt and despair.
     Upon looking up the etymology of the word evil in The American Heritage Dictionary, one notes that evil comes from the Old English word yfal, which one might say evolved into “I fall” or “I fell,” which phonetically sounds like “evil.” For instance, the word fell also comes from Old English fellan or fellen, which today means felon, “one who commits felonies” or “an evil person.” When applied to Brown, the “felony” he commits is merely falling from faith into the sin of doubt.
     It is interesting to note the article by Paul Hurley. He states that some readers might infer the man in the woods to be the devil: “I believe the reader has every right to wonder if the townspeople are actually cohorts of the Devil” (Hurley 2). If so, the kind of evil in Brown’s mind must be a kind of tempting for him to attend some kind of dark gathering in the dark places or back of his mind, whether in reality or through some dark subconscious fantasy. “The man of integrity [faith] walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out” (Proverbs 10:9). It seems Brown’s excursion into the wood may be apt, especially when Hawthorne writes that Brown “passed a crook on the road” (Hawthorne 540).
     If merely fantasy, one might say Brown’s thoughts are wanderings through a mind scape of dark caverns of his own discord and distrust. He is wondering about the fidelity of his wife, really projecting onto her his own infidelities. “His [Brown’s] visions are the product of his suspicion and distrust,” (Hurley 2) which indicates that he has not only questioned his wife, Faith but also the grace of God. Just as the devil was cast out of heaven and fallen to the earth, and as Adam and Eve fell from the Garden of Eden, it seems the point of Hawthorne’s narratives is to explore the process of moving from trust to distrust, and to show how a person may fall to the temptations of evil and lose faith. Hawthorne includes much of this in his text.
     In the beginning of the story, Brown and his Faith depart. She pleads for him to stay home, because “A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she’s afeard of herself sometimes” (Hawthorne 540). Brown then asks her, “ . . . dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months married?” (Hawthorne 540). Both of these comments seem to foreshadow the wanderings of the mind from faith to doubt. The comments seem to allude to man’s general tendency to slip into sin, to take for granted the truth of salvation in faith. Then, as Brown turns to see Faith watch him leave, Brown thinks to himself, “Poor little Faith,” (Hawthorne 540) as if to say to himself in guilt, “I have such little faith (in God),” whereby “his heart smote him” (Hawthorne 540). It is that term, “smote” that indicates the heavy descent of man into sin, wherein “Goodman Brown felt justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose” (Hawthorne 540).
     In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne claimed to write “the truths of the human heart.” Yet, “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve” (Jeremiah 17: 9-10). But, the heart of Goodman Brown is mistaken; it is fallen into the felony of sin. The very name “Goodman Brown” seems to be an anagrammatic allusion to the blasphemous taking of the Lord’s name in vain. Moreover, the name “Good Dame” is also an allusion to the same cursing of God. It seems Hawthorne is merely alluding to what lurks beneath the mind of mankind, clouded in the sub layers of language.
     When Brown enters the wood, he begins to imagine fearful things: “‘What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!’” (Hawthorne 540). It is this fearful imagining that seems to have conjured the devil in Brown’s presence, whether mentally or physically. Hawthorne seems to show that it is at the crucial point wherein fear replaces faith that mankind begins to fall. When Brown passes a “crook of the road,” (Hawthorne 540) Hawthorne is writing ambiguously, stating in one sense the “crook” is a bend in the path, but also a “felon” of sin, the devil. When Brown notices the man dressed in “grave and decent attire,” (Hawthorne 541), again the play on words indicates a deeper level of darkness in the character on the road.
     When the old man, who is presumably the devil states that Brown is late, the latter responds, “Faith kept me back awhile” (Hawthorne 541) indicating that faith in God was what delayed Brown’s fall to the devil’s grip. All things considered, Hawthorne’s short story is really an allegorical tale of mankind’s tendency to fall to evil. It is the call of the elect to decide whether to allow their faith in the things unseen to keep them in the arms of Christ or to let the devil of doubt deter us from the Lord.
   

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” Concise Anthology of American Literature, 2nd Edition. Ed. George McMichael. Macmillan Publishing Company: New York, 1985.

Hurley, Paul J. “Young Goodman Brown’s Heart of Darkness.” American Literature. Vol. XXXVII, No. 4. January, 1966, pp. 410-19.

“Proverbs.” The Holy Bible. The New International Version. International Bible Society: New York, 1984.

“Jeremiah.” The Holy Bible. The New International Version. International Bible Society: New York, 1984.

El Mendigo del Mendios y Mimado Chiflado con Oliver Twist

Yesterday, while doing a lecture on why one should study serious literature, two characters were born, Mendigo del Mendios and Mimado Chiflado.

As I explained to students the differences between popular and serious literature, I searched for examples of "depth of character," or characters who struggle with the human condition. We spoke much on the popularity of Harry Potter, and read an article by Harold Bloom showing how Harry doesn't really struggle much in his cozy middle-class life.

In contrast, I tried to explain the need for a character to engage in the human condition in a way that is relevant to students who may not have read the Potter series. I conjured up the memory of a little boy in Matamoros who is taught to beg, lie and steal from a very young age. Sometimes he sells chicle to lure them in; other times, he approaches tourists and pretends to be destitute, eliciting sympathy for money. (I remember encountering children like this on occasions, when I used to go to Mexico to Garcia's restaurant.)

In this improvised story, I told students about how Mendigo is taught to lie to people and to expect others to take care of him, especially and including his older brother, a bad youth who bullies him into doing these heinous things.

One day, however, Mendigo comes across a nun, perhaps at a soup kitchen. She sees what he's going through and feels pity for him. She sees past the lies and tells him that he needs to learn to read. So, she finds a way to bring him to her parish, begins teaching him how to read, and becomes a quasi-surrogate mother to him. As the boy finds ways of sneaking away from his older brother and stays with the nun, he grows in his new literacy via the redemptive power of true charity; he begins to acquire language, which causes him to reflect.

One day, while in the safety of a church van, he drives past the city trash dump, where he sees his brother and their friends sifting through detritus, looking for scraps. He thinks about the resonating words his mentor has planted inside. While a tear runs down his cheek, she places her hand on his, snapping him out of the cold spell. He begins to realize he must crawl out of that crab pit, that he must learn to believe in himself, and continue to think and reflect. With the nuns help, he enrolls in a U.S. school and undergoes an intellectual growth spurt.

And, yet, to emphasize the fact that the human condition not only applies to those at the bottom of a social class, those who struggle with economic forces, it also applies to the affluent, the other character of this story was born, Mimado Chiflado.

This little boy grew up in one of the nearby country clubs. His parents have taught him that the only way they prove to him that they love him is by buying him everything he wants. For example, one day, he demanded a new gaming system for his birthday. Because his parents didn't get him the one with the correct colors, he threw a fit and refused to play it.

As the two boys go about their daily lives, they happen to come across one another, perhaps on the first day of school. They attend St. Joseph's Catholic School, one on scholarship, the other on paid tuition. In this meeting, they realize they look very much alike. So, after a brief conversation, they decide to switch places, the poor boy to see what it's like to live comfortably, the rich boy to see what it's like to be truly loved. Yes, I know this sounds like Twain's "Prince and the Pauper," but I add a Dickensian twist to it to make it multidimensional.

As the two boys switch places, the rich boy happens across one of the poor boy's old beggar boys and his older brother who taught him to lie, cheat and steal. The Beggar Boys are illiterate, so they don't have much depth of thought. When the rich boy enters the poor boy's world, the older brother abducts him and takes him to the Beggar Boys' Den (a veritable den of thieves), where he and the other older boys bully him into pulling a dangerous job, much like in Dicken's Oliver Twist.

Anyway, the overall point of these two characters is to illustrate the need for characters to engage in struggles that change them, that force them to reflect. If a story only moves through action and plot, it most likely is meant for entertainment only. If characters have to struggle to resolve conflicts, then most likely the literary text should be respected, it should be "looked at again and taken seriously."