Goodman Brown: The man who saw true evil

     After reading Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown, I was confused as to what the author was trying to convey, and decided to look closer at the major events. Like many of the other literary works that center around the puritan way of life, religious piety plays into the story in some way. In this case, due to puritan life being about being pure Christians, Goodman Brown was just trying to follow what he had been taught all along. In the end he stayed the way he was at the beginning, but saw evil in everyone else because of their actions. There is a lesson to be learned from this story, as it reveals what most fail to see about themselves. Sometimes we instill an idea in someone and tell them to adhere to it for fear of punishment, failure, or loss. However, we fail to follow what we teach others to do or not to do at times, which raises a question. How can one warn another against something, while engaging in the very behavior, or action, he or she warned against? From the puritan view of it, Goodman Brown was most likely fearful and sad because he saw the truth. No one is perfect and there is evil in us all, along with good. The moral of the story, from my stand point, is that there is no such thing as perfect and that everyone is capable of good and evil.