Darkness Symbolism In Young Goodman Brown

There are times where we enter a metaphorical rabbit’s hole, where we leave the surface of what is around us, and enter the abyss wandering through the depths and mazes of our beings into the darkness of the world before us. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown, a young man sets out away from his faith into the paths of the forest where darkness lies: Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street of Salem village; but his head turned back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife… “Dearest heart,” whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips, were close to his ear, “pr’ithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your bed tonight”… “My love and my Faith,” replied young Goodman Brown, “of all nights in the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee” (1). Goodman Brown symbolizes innocence and youth, his journey into the woods represents his conscious self merging with the subconscious as it delves out of civility into human instinct. Sunset represents the end of light and the journey of the world into darkness. As Goodman steps away from his home he leaves the light and faith before him and crosses the threshold of a world that is unknown to him. Faith his wife, whispers to him to not journey into the darkness, but to stay into the world of light, but he has this instinct that he must ‘tarry away from thee’ and enter into the woods. Joseph Urgo talks of how the writers of the new frontier put forth nationalism by recognizing that America was made up of many parts, and by bringing short stories of the outsiders it united what it meant to be an American. “An overwhelming sense of national space produced an insatiable curiosity for who and what occupied that space (341). This is what Hawthorne shows in his writing as Goodman goes from the world of civility into the unknown world of the outsiders. As Goodman Brown wanders into the woods he meets an older traveler that is like him but is ingrained with a sense of knowing that is instilled in him: “And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and would not have felt abashed… were it possible that his affairs should call him thither” (2). The older traveler represents the devil or evil that lies within and the darkness that Goodman is afraid to address. He fears that his faith will be subdued and tainted with the emergence of this darker presence, and the knowing and mastery of it will make him give way onto his faith giving the heavenly world more depth than the surface view he has. This is shown as he travels deeper into the forest as every time he comes into contact with someone in the woods he views them as being no longer good and angelic, but filled with the desire to do evil and wicked deeds: The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air, passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered nor solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these holy men be …show more content…
It is not until the voice of one young woman that he begins to have permanent doubt in the light around him: “There was one voice, of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward” (7). Everything comes to a moment where the forces of good and evil become aligned in their task as the young woman moves forward to her destiny that will make her whole and diminishes a part of the innocence she holds within. This frightens Goodman Brown as he fears that not only he but is wife which represents light and goodness within himself will become distorted and clouded in a murkiness that cannot be