Answer to Question 1
- Hawthorne hints that the devils revelations to Brown and the midnight Sabbath are all one grand illusion. When Brown staggers against the supposedly flaming rock, it proves cold and damp, and a twig that had been on fire suddenly drips cold dew. (We are indebted here to F. O. Matthiessens discussion in American Renaissance Oxford: Oxford UP, 1941 284.) If we read him right, Hawthorne favors the interpretation that Brown dreamed everything (Be that as it may . . .). Leave it to the devil to concoct a truly immense deception.
Whether Brown has actually experienced the events in the forest or (as we assume) merely imagined them, the effect upon him is the same: he has been converted to the devils view that human nature is universally corrupt and wicked, that all goodness is hypocrisy and pretense. As a result, all of the joy and hope go out of his life; he becomes bitter and cynical, withdrawn and alienated from everyone; and he lives and dies a shattered, despairing soul.
Still, some ambiguity remains. As Hawthorne declared in a letter to a friend in 1854, I am not quite sure that I entirely comprehend my own meaning in some of these blasted allegories. If what Brown saw at the witches Sabbath really did take place, then his gloom and misery at the end of the story seem understandable. Some have read the story to mean that Brown has grown up to have a true sense of sin and therefore ends a good Puritan; he has purged himself of his boyish good cheer. But we find the morose Brown deluded, not admirable, and suspect that Hawthorne does too.
Answer to Question 2Some students may not have encountered the term
allegory before, but others will probably know it already. Not only Faith can be seen as a figure of allegory, but Young Goodman Brown himselfthe Puritan Everyman, subject to the temptation to find evil everywhere. For a class that has already begun symbol-hunting, Young Goodman Brown is a fair field. Among the more richly suggestive items are the devils snaky staff or walking-stick (par. 13), with its suggestions of the Eden snake and the serpentine rods of the Egyptian magicians (Exodus 7:812). When the devil laughs, it squirms happily (par. 22). It works like seven-league boots, and its holder enjoys rapid transportation. The devil gives it to Goody Cloyse and then plucks Brown a fresh stick from a maple (par. 3841); when Brown grasps it in despair (par. 51), it speeds him on to the unholy communion. Other symbolic items (and actions) include the forestto enter it is to be led into temptation, and Brown keeps going deeper and deeperthe withering of the maple branch at the devils touch
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