Nature and the Supernatural Theme Analysis

Hawthorne uses the forest to represent the wild fearful world of nature, which contrasts starkly with the pious orderly town of Salem. The threshold Goodman Brown finds himself perched upon in the opening lines of the story is not just between himself and his wife, Faith, but between the safety of the town and the haunted realm of the forest into which he ventures. Home is a safe harbor of faith, but the forest represents the home of evil and the devil himself, a place where “no church had ever been gathered or solitary Christian prayed.”

When the devil tries to lure Goodman Brown deeper into the forest, Goodman Brown equates the forest with a break from his faithful legacy. Going into the woods means descending into the arms of the devil. He cries out “Too far! Too far!...My father never went into the woods on such an errand.” Trees are symbols of sin, hiding spots for the devil and Indian “savages”: “[t]here may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,” he worries aloud. The devil might leap out “from behind a tree” at any moment, he fears. When Goodman Brown meets the man, who we later learn is the devil, the devil himself is seated on an “old tree.”

Once he relents and journeys far in the “deep dusk” of the forest, Goodman Brown finds that nature and the supernatural begin to blend. The woods take on a life of their own: when he first sees the devil’s snake-shaped staff, it’s not just a piece of carved wood, but a terrifying serpent that “might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself.” A bit later, when the devil explodes in laughter mocking Goodman Brown, the “snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy.”

In the encounter with Goody Cloyse, a catechism teacher turned witch, Goodman Brown watches in horror as the devil throws her his serpent-shaped staff, causing it to “assume life” and vanish with her instantly into the darkness of the forest. When Goodman Brown cries out in desperation for Faith after hearing her voice in the witches’ congregation, her pink ribbon magically falls from the sky. At this point, the woods are no longer just a gathering of scary trees, but a haunted sanctuary of sin. When Goodman Brown sees his church leaders in the forest en route to the witches’ meeting, he asks in horror, “Whither, then, could these holy men be journeying so deep into the heathen wilderness?” Like the sinners within it, the wilderness itself has become a heathen.

After the witches’ ceremony, as Goodman Brown reels in terror at his loss of faith, the personification of the forest and nature deepens. Now entirety of nature mocks Goodman Brown: “The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians...as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn.” Natural phenomena also bookend the story: it starts with the sun setting, and ends with the sun rising. Goodman Brown’s experience is one of darkness literally--nearly the entire story takes place at night--and darkness figuratively, with Goodman Brown moving from the angelic light of his blissful newlywed life with Faith and her pink ribbons, to the dark hell of the forest and a rendezvous with the “prince of darkness” himself.