Nathaniel Hawthorne "Young Goodman Brown"

“We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name Brown that ever took this path and kept” (540).

It was very difficult for Young Goodman Brown to believe that people who were so close to him, did in fact have evil in them. This quote is referencing Young Goodman Brown’s father and grandfather. His false sense of honesty and good will in the world made him into a naïve and later on in the story, a very depressed man who lived his life in absolute gloom.
Although this story is only a dream of Young Goodman Brown’s, the way he dealt with his experience/dream is an important moral to the story. He cannot distinguish between the two and is not sure whether or not his encounter with this devil really did take place or whether he dreamed the entire experience. Perhaps his reaction of such strong emotions following this event taking place came from his subconscious belief that not all Christians practiced what they said they believed. He says he will be “the first man of the name of Brown” who will not allow the evil into his life. In reality, he is the only one who does allow evil to take over him due to his actions of later turning on his family and those around him. He questions and observes them with disgust, which he even cannot do for too long before he turns away. Instead of dealing with his thoughts face to face, his misery made him into a lonely and sad old man.
The idea of the unconscious, which Young Goodman Brown was throughout the story, can be interpreted under the psychoanalytic theory. In this theory, development is described as a primarily unconscious, or beyond awareness, and is heavily portrayed by emotion. He goes through an immense amount of emotions and begins to look down upon those around him. He even believes that his father and grandfather were not pure Christians and contained evil tendencies in them. His life was spent by holding this notion of evilness against his family and every time “the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself” (547). Young Goodman Brown, whether he was sure of it or not, believed his dream/experience to be true and treated everyone around him as such.