The Whale Belly

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s allegory, “Young Goodman Brown,” explores the consequences of denying the darker side of one’s own human condition. On the surface, it’s about a Puritan in seventeenth century Salem who loses faith in humanity after attending a black mass in the forest, and discovering that the pious townspeople are followers of the devil. But on a deeper level, it’s a critique of the lasting impact of Puritan ideology in education, rigid social mores, fear of the Other, and the equating of faith with purity. Unfortunately, these themes still resonate in American society today.

One of the most salient of these themes is Goodman Brown’s religious education. His baffled response to the revelation that his old catechism teacher is a witch, represents a painful epiphany about the problematic nature of catechistic education. Catechism is a form of education that employs predetermined questions and predetermined responses about the beliefs, doctrines, and practices of the Christian faith. In other words, there is no room given for sympathetic dialogue, nor for coming to terms with the darker sides of one’s own condition. It demands, instead, rectification by way of conformity to the Church’s doctrinal image of purity. Since at least Freud, such a repressive approach has been understood to cultivate pathologies. Coming into adulthood unprepared to confront the darker side of the human condition, Goodman Brown is thus overwhelmed by his own dark tendencies.

The repressive nature of Goodman Brown’s education mirrors the broader expectations and norms of the Puritan society. Transgressions were harshly punished, sometimes by imprisonment or death, suggested by Hawthorne’s use of the names of actual people put on trial for witchcraft in Salem for some of his characters. Deviant Puritans were also sometimes ostracized or exiled, which Goodman Brown realizes would have prevented his father and grandfather from ever discussing the atrocities the devil claims they committed, for “the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from New England.” It stands that this is the same reason he’s never heard rumors of any other good person transgressing the morals system of Puritan New England. This silence creates an illusion of perfection among the most pious, becoming an impossible standard for people like Goodman Brown, and thus generating anxiety about one’s innate capacity for goodness. Guilt and shame are likely to fester, swell, and explode, as represented by Goodman Brown losing hope and turning demonic.

These social mores are reinforced by Puritan society’s negative portrayal of outsiders, especially the Native Americans. The first thing Goodman Brown says to himself upon entering the woods is, “There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree.” The association of Native Americans with the devil is suffused throughout the story, namely their cries being heard at the height of his nightmarish experience, and the appearance of “Indian powows” at the altar where his soul is readied to sacrifice. They represent the opposite of the good, staid Puritan society. They represent wildness, savagery, and evil. They are something to be feared, to protected from, and in this way they offer justification for the ways of living favorable to Puritan ideology.

Yet, this intolerance and fear do not only shape Puritan society’s perception of the external world; they also deeply influence personal relationships and intimate beliefs, as illustrated by Goodman Brown’s understanding of ‘faith.’ Faith is represented by his wife, named Faith, who is presented as an innocent “sweet, pretty wife,” decorated with pink ribbons. She is expected by Goodman Brown to stay at home and to go to bed early, and to await his return from his “evil purpose.” He believes after he does his sordid task, he will simply renounce his sin and “cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven.” But Faith follows him into the forest, and Goodman Brown discovers her ribbons caught on a branch in the thick of the woods. He then cries out “My Faith is gone!” and turns demonic. We learn, however, that Faith is not gone. When she reappears at the altar, he is afraid to look at her, because his own journey into his darkness has made him “more conscious of the secret guilt of others.” His learned belief that faith can only reside in purity, allows Goodman Brown to accept the dark priest’s declaration that “Evil is the nature of mankind.”

Hawthorne was interested in seventeenth century Salem partly because it was a way of reflecting on nineteenth century America. And what makes him interesting today is the fact that it’s not hard to find parallels in our own time. Our education systems leave little room for exploration of ourselves or the human condition at large, geared as it is toward positivistic measuring and meriting of intelligence in factory-like settings. Our social norms are becoming increasingly intolerant of open discourse or momentary deviance as social media has expanded and extended exposure and condemnation of breaches of increasingly rigid propriety. Our othering of outsiders has caused highly concentrated pockets of distrust along lines of race, gender, class, and nationality. And our shying away from the darkness of humanity by ignoring the realities of poverty, war, climate change, and the myriad of other seemingly intractable sins of humanity, leaves us with a empty faith in humankind.

Hawthorne asks us to consider what impact does this have on our sense of self, our self-esteems, our spiritual and mental developments. What sort of life will we end up living if we deny our full humanity? What pathologies will we incur by repressing what we judge to be odious about ourselves? What fears will keep us shackled, what problems will go unsolved? Young Goodman Brown, for his part, becomes “a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man.” Upon his death “they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.” Perhaps it would be better to be more honest about who we are and what we think, if only so we can do better for ourselves.