Young Goodman Brown

In the story Goodman Brown begins by leaving his wife on an overnight journey where he meets a stranger in the woods (who we find out is later the devil.) As Brown begins to travel he notices peculiar things about the stranger he is traveling with, like the fact that as the stranger holds plants in his hand they seem to wilt. Brown, a firm christian holds onto his faith but begins to get scared as he journeys through the woods. He stops walking several times because he is scared to go any further because it is unrighteous but eventually moves forward. Brown hears voices of the townspeople talking as they gather to meet for a congregation of evil, inviting two new members into their group. No townsperson isn't in the congregation., High and low, good and bad alike join for the induction of members. Soon the townspeople grab Goodman Brown and his wife and begin to throw them into a fire of the devil to induct them as Goodman Brown resists the devil and begs his wife not to. However, as Goodman Brown is taken from the situation by the Lord he is unable to hear what his wife's decision was. The next morning Goodman Brown awakes and realizes that he is unable to decipher whether last nights proceedings were real or fakes. He can not determine who is a devil worshipper any more and everyone's image in his mind is dashed. When he visits church he sees everyone as a hypocrite and cannot even trust his own wife. Goodman Brown dies a gloomy man with no friends.

The central theme of this story is that everyone in the Puritan village was hypocritical. Everyone lived out holy lives while secretly making a deal with the devil. So in essence, everyone was a hypocrite but is held together by the standards of what they should be by putting up a front.