Confrontations of Sin: A Literary Analysis of Hawthorne's Goodman Brown

"First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires" (NIV Study Bible, 2 Peter 3:3). I had heard those words in a sermon just a few days earlier. Now before my eyes are illustrations that expose the mind of the cynic, one who closes himself off from the revelations of God and creates a world of his own making. The drawings I examine depict the argument that the sermon echoes; the degree in which we find the scoffer within, so much so will we find ourselves removed from the presence of God (Hall). Distorted, detached body parts with the recognizable marks of the crucifixion of Christ, are a repeated theme of the artist Lee Baxter Davis. The drawings leave a person of faith disturbed. At the core of these illuminations, is the deep felt human desires to simply do as one pleases, to leave the bounds of established social order and explore the forbidden. Taken to the extreme this universal urge passes through the wilderness of sin unto the idolization of evil. Art elevates what society values.

Mary, my friend, fellow Bible teacher and willing companion in the exploration of the arts stands by my side. Pregnant, she radiates the hope and expectation of her impending motherhood, but now looks at me with troubled face.

"I don't like any of these drawings." she confesses, "but let's wait and discuss them in the car."

We are celebrating her birthday with an outing to an opening at The Dallas Contemporary Center for the Arts. Curated by my art professor, Greg Metz from UTD, the show highlights a group of drawings by his former teacher, Lee Baxter Davis and 11 of his protégés, including himself. Mary's one prerequisite to these outings is that I be willing to explain the art to her.

"Ruth, what are they trying to say?" she implores.

Much of the work is disturbing with the obvious point to shock and push the limit, causing me to remain silent. I too, want the seclusion of the car to voice my inner thoughts. With the rest of the renderings, I am able to point to a sense of design and color, a freedom and child-like quality. A few, I suggest to Mary that she view from across the room and think of fabric designs blown up and highlighted. Although I enjoyed the freedom of abstraction, she is unconvinced.

Mary is a recent graduate from UTD in literature, where I am studying art. I had asked her beforehand to discuss Nathaniel Hawthorn and the short story "Young Goodman Brown". Oddly enough, this exhibit is the perfect backdrop for our discourse. I am intrigued by Hawthorne's confrontation of sin, the characters and imagery he uses to portray it in short fiction.

Mary spent most of her course time at the university studying the American Romantic period. We escape out of the front door of the museum gallery into the night, into the delightfully lit architecture of the Victorian Houses on Swiss Ave in Dallas, where The Contemporary resides.

"I think I just rediscovered a deep conviction of mine; I require art to have beauty in order for me to embrace it." she divulges. Goodman Brown is not a story about beauty. It exposes our ugliness.

Mary confesses, "I have only read The House of the Seven Gables. I tired to read the Scarlet Letter, but was driven back. Hawthorne has some of the longest, most convoluted sentences in all of American literature. He can be unbelievably tangled with his sentence structure."

"Like the wilderness he loves to use as a backdrop for his stories," I suggest.

In "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne uses the imagery of the wilderness as a personification of sin.

"Yes, the wilderness had a certain fascination for the Romantics," Mary explains.

To understand the short fiction, "Young Goodman Brown," it helps to look at Hawthorne, his time and the influences in his life. Written in the early 1830's, the story is a precursor to the writings of the Romantics. Hawthorne rejects Puritan thought. This story shows that the introspection of sin required by the Puritan sect causes an indisputable distrust for self and fellow man that lead to the hysteria of the Salem witch trials. "Hawthorne's claim is that confusion is the only possible result of Puritan doctrine. To mistrust yourself, your neighbor, your teacher, and your very mind can not create faith" (McCabe). Hawthorne's interest in Puritan thought stems from the role one of his ancestors played in the Salem witch trials. Born in Salem Massachusetts, his contemporaries and friends were Emerson, Longfellow and Melvin. These men of literature greatly influenced each other and the society in which they lived. They built on the ideas of philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. "Rousseau talked about God, but he found his god in nature. His god was all peace and goodness... Rousseau shifted the focus from objective revelation (the Bible) to subjective experience (feelings); from other people to the inner life, and from loving God and neighbor to loving self" (Welch). This shift caused a major change in the way people thought about their faith. The Bible is no longer the source of truth. This allows everyman to decide for themselves what is right or wrong. In the story "Young Goodman Brown," what transpired in the wilderness is a picture of the consequences of this new approach to faith. The wilderness is full of the voices of the scoffer.

Goodman Brown takes the shape of the struggler, another character from Sunday's sermon. Brown "struggles with sin having some faith but giving up when confronted with difficulties; trials and temptations" (Hall). The result of his encounter with sin and evil is that Brown becomes "A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man... from the night of that fearful dream... And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse...they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom" (Hawthorne 1356). Goodman Brown has not a faith of his own. When exposed to the sin of others in his wilderness journey and they prove all too human, he is wounded. Brown has not a genuine faith that is able to stand, because he has not a genuine repentance, when confronted with his own sin.

Hawthorne loved psychology and in his young Goodman Brown he probes the mind of man by illustrating the rite of passage into adulthood that most humans take; testing boundaries, exploring the unknown. The drawings in our gallery experience have the same adolescent quality about them. Goodman Brown is pushed along by his own fallen nature and the influence of a personification of evil, the devil, which Hawthorne believes is active in the lives of men (Reuben). Hawthorne chronicles Goodman Brown's journey from convention in into the wilderness, where he is confronted with the evil in himself and others. Much to his dismay, he discovers "a loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart" (Hawthorne 1354). with those who have come to worship evil at a witch's Sabbath. The reader is left to decide whether Brown actually attends or just dreams he narrowly escapes baptism into a witch's coven. He is changed for the worse by the discoveries in the wilderness. Brown fights within himself the whole journey, but with the insistent help of the cunning devil traveler, he finds himself before the altar of the fiend, in spite of his protests. Brown begins with good intentions, he reasons with the devil, briefly refrains, protests, refuses to follow and prays. But the wilderness outside Salem through which Brown journeys to the witches' Sabbath, is full of the laughter and disparaging sounds of the scoffer. The traveler devil draws him in, twists the truth, mocks him, encourages ever so cleverly by exhorting "his companion to make good speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly that his arguments seemed rather to spring up in the bosom of his auditor than to be suggested by himself" (1350). The most effective weapon the traveler uses against Goodman is to expose him to the sin of others.

Those revelations bring him to the point of despair. Sin rises up in Brown. Hawthorne explains that "the fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man" (1352-1353). Goodman Brown at first appears ignorant to the evil he pursues. In its awakening, he finds unexpected consequences. Brown is forever scared by sin, driven into isolation, like Adam the first man, was driven from the garden. He is never able to trust another person, rejoice in his wife or truly worship God. As a character from Sunday's sermon, the struggler, Brown becomes "a person who shrinks back when intimidated and discouraged by the scoffer" (Hall).

Goodman Brown leaves the wilderness. "The only true knowledge that he gains is that he cannot know everything, and he does not know everything" (Hardt). This revelation leaves him disillusioned. "Not able to answer the big questions, or understand why injustices are unanswered, the struggler shrinks away. "(Hall)

How we handle our confrontations with sin is important. Greg Metz in the film Drawing Under the Influence explains that Davis' work is "not so much profound, as it is confounding" (Metz). Davis does not offer solutions to the ugliness inside that he loves to express in his work. Human beings have a need for answers.

Mary tells me, "the drawings brought to mind the scripture passage from Romans, 'For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened' (NIV Study Bible, Romans 1:21). I can see their creativity, even their brilliance in the work. But it seems to become confused and mangled, wanting to find a means of expression, but falling short."

Like the drawings in the exhibit confound and unearth in us the distortion of sin, the wilderness of Young Goodman Brown, demands the same exercise of the reader.

Confounded by sin people are confused. Hawthorne plays on this in the way he describes the worship of evil. "As the red light arose and fell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and again grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once" (Hawthorne 1353). Goodman Brown is overwhelmed when he is unsure of what his senses are telling him. Is he is seeing people or not? Is he hearing voices or not?

Confounded by sin people are shocked. "There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds" (1354). Goodman Brown's faith is accosted when he realizes who has come to join in the celebration of evil.

Sin distorts what God created as good and beautiful. In a passage in the story Goodman Brown "looked up to the sky, doubting whether there really was a heaven above him" His doubt is increased as he see nature responds to, and increases his confusion.

While he still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had lifted his hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a confused and doubtful sound of voices (1352).

Since Rousseau published his ideas, the confusions of voices have increased. Hawthorne and the Romantic writers helped to define the societal changes that brought about by the great experiment in freedom, and the birth of democracy. Today, we use our freedom to challenge the norm. Man has always challenged authority, but he is now free to do so openly, to even celebrate this freedom like the worshippers choose to celebrate evil. Freedom to choose evil also implies freedom to choose beauty and truth.

I can appreciate the artistry of some of the drawings in the exhibit. Davis' use of pen and watercolor is almost beautiful. But at closer inspection, there are bones hidden in the underbrush of the landscape. There is a figure pleasing except for a twisted and distorted face. Hawthorne's hymns in the wilderness, have that same eerie quality. "The verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony together" (1353). When I consider the art work, I think of the scourging scene in The Passion of the Christ. The scene where Satan holds a baby in his arms, as it turns its face to the viewer, a hideous face is revealed. Answering the question, "What's up with the ugly baby?" Gibson explains

It's evil distorting what's good. What is more tender and beautiful than a mother and a child? So the Devil takes that and distorts it just a little bit. Instead of a normal mother and child you have an androgynous figure holding a 40-year-old 'baby' with hair on his back. It is weird, it is shocking, it's almost too much-just like turning Jesus over to continue scourging him on his chest is shocking and almost too much, which is the exact moment when this appearance of the Devil and the baby takes place (Moring).

Mel Gibson's movie easily falls into the genre of art that pushes the limit. It could also be called a study of evil. In a society of limit pushers, Gibson speaks the language of this generation. Exposing to us what can happen when evil is unrestrained; an innocent man dies an unexplainable cruel death. The movie is shocking. It is controversial.

Unlike Hawthorne's short story where Brown dies in gloom, or the depressing statement made by the show at The Contemporary, Gibson's Passion reveals to us the antidote for evil in the claims of the rabbi from Galilee. Jesus claims to be the Son of God and dies because of that claim. He sacrifices himself for the ones which the fiend at the altar declares, "Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your [their] only happiness"(Hawthorne 1355). But Jesus' death was not the end of life. In his encounter with evil he remains untouched.

Work Cited

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Hardt, John S. "Doubts in the American Garden: Three Cases of Paradisal Skepticism."

Studies in Short Fiction 25 (1988): 249-59. Review of Selected Criticism of "Young Goodman Brown" . Virginia Commonwealth University. 1995. April 09, 2004 http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng372/ygbcrit1.htm.

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as Historical Context for Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown." American Literature Research and Analysis Web Site. 27 July 1998.2 April 2004 http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/Hawthorne.htm.

Metz, Greg. Drawing Under the Influence.. The Dallas Contemporary Center for the Arts. 2004.

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March 27, 2004. 2 April 2004 Welch, Edward. When People are Big and God is Small. Phillipsburg NJ: P&R Publishing, 1997.