Religion In Young Goodman Brown

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1854 short story “Young Goodman Brown,” Goodman Brown goes into the forest at night and has a thought-provoking conversation within a timeworn man. Young Goodman Brown’s wife Faith warns him not to venture off into the night because the devil resides within the forest. Despite the warning, Brown still goes off into the woods and encounters a long-standing man with a serpent-like staff. Brown states that he should return to the village for Faith’s sake and only met him due to a promise. Brown then begins to talk about how devout his family is and the old man proclaims that he knew Brown’s father and grandfather. As time progress, the geezer notices Goody Cloyse headed toward their direction; Brown hides from Goody Cloyse who is going to a
Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian stood in the early sunshine at her own lattice, catechizing a little girl who had brought her a pint of morning's milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the grasp of the fiend himself,” (8-9).
With this new exposure, Brown now sees no point in religion and becomes an observer within the crowd. Their religion proclaims that a person lives a holly and God-pleasing life but if no one can live up to that reputation and willingly commit sinful actions then there is no reason for the religion to exist because they will continue to repeat the caustic cycle of sin. In conclusion, the short story of “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathanial Hawthorne illustrates how insincere people of a religion can be. Though human beings are born in sin and have sinful propensities, those who decide to be committed to a religion should hold those values in high regard and knowingly know when they are about to commence a sinful action; instead of living a life as a masked pious man around others when in reality, they are actually living as a heathen would and feel as though they can become “cleansed” and “renewed” by attending