Running head: BROWN
Brown and Faith (APA)
Kaitlin Holden
Liberty University
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Brown and Faith
In Young Goodman Brown, Goodman Brown and his wife Faith are two characters that
face a lot throughout the story. At first it seems to be a quite normal conflict between a husband
and wife. Faith fears danger and she doesn’t want Brown to leave her during the night, but he
doesn’t listen to her. Brown clings to his wife Faith when he questions the goodness of the
people around them because if Faith remains godly and doesn’t fall to the devil then he will fight
temptation to maintain his faith but when he found out that her faith was corrupted he began to
believe in evil.
Evil Ceremony
Brown deals with internal conflict of good and evil as he leaves his village and his wife
to travel into the dark forest to meet the devil. But when he reaches there, he must choose to
either go back to his faith or explore the evils that the devil has to offer. He is confronted by
people who live in his community that are also attending this meeting. Even though he has been
confronted by all these people he still says for Faith’s sake he will stay true to God. As he
reaches the ceremony, he thinks he recognizes Faith’s voice and screams her name.
After feeling like there was no good left in the world because his wife has turned to evil,
he grabs the staff. He began to look through the crowd and he didn’t see her, and he started to
have hope again. But then he saw his wife, he told her to look up to heaven and resist the devil
and then he finds himself alone in the forest. This ceremony forever changed his life and he
lived in gloom and fear.
Brown
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After Brown experienced the evil ceremony and returned to his village everyone seemed
evil to him. When he saw his wife, he refused to greet her, and he was very uncertain if the
encounter in the forest was a dream or not. He began not to trust anybody in the village. Brown
couldn’t trust the words of the minister and he didn’t fully love his wife anymore. He had
trouble believing in the goodness of the people around him and how the devil had taken over the
minds of all the people he loved. This shows that his belief in God can be easily shaken as well
as of the good and evil sides of the people around him.
Faith Even though Faith was a pure-hearted person and stood for all religious things.
She was corrupted by the devil and Brown lost his wife to the devil and he lost his belief in God
and his Christian view on the world. Brown’s internal conflict is based on “keeping the faith”
and at first you can see that when his wife begged him to remain at home. Faith was Brown’s
rock and if she remained godly, he would too. She was a symbol of innocence as symbolized by
the pink ribbon in her cap. Brown was confused and didn’t know if she was still the pure woman,
he thought she was, or she really was corrupted by the devil.
SympathyWhen it comes to sympathy, I feel like Brown feels my deepest sympathy because
he went to this ceremony and was shocked by all the people he saw from his village. This
ceremony ruined his life and made him mistrust the people he loved. He began to see the evil in
everyone that he passed in his village. The love he once had for his wife was gone and his faith
in God was slipping away. In the end I feel like the devil really corrupted him more so than
anybody else.
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ConclusionWhen Faith’s faith was corrupted. Brown began to fell apart and she was the only
thing helping him to fight his temptations. Through all this Brown saw the evil in the people that
he loved. He then lived the rest of his life in gloom and fear because he didn’t have trust in the
people in his village and he didn’t fully love his wife anymore. You never know if these
conflicts were resolved and it was unclear if this encounter was a dream.
References
Hawthorne, N. (1992). Young Goodman Brown, and other short stories. New York: Dover
Publications.
