Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown is about the necessity of having faith. In this story, Goodman Brown is forced to go on a journey that tested his faith. Hawthorne uses Faith as both Goodman Brown’s wife and as a symbol of Goodman Brown’s faith in the Lord and perhaps in humanity as well; Hawthorne describes the wife as “aptly named.” This use of symbolism presents itself many times in the story. Goodman Brown states “I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven,” which means that he will follow his wife to heaven and that having faith will take him to heaven. Goodman Brown also tells that traveler “With Heaven above, and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!” meaning that with his faith in the Lord, he will resist evilness.
As Goodman Brown continues on his dark journey, he sees Goody Cloyse conversing with the traveler and the minister and Deacon Gookin heading deep into the forest for the meeting. Because Goodman Brown highly respects these people, he begins to doubt "whether there really was a Heaven above him." However, Goodman Brown does not lose faith until he sees that most of the pious people of Salem including his wife gathered at the witch-meeting. He exclaims “My Faith is gone!” and “There is no good on earth and sin is but a name. Come, devil! For to thee is this world given.” Goodman Brown has lost his faith in all humanity and in the belief that he can be saved. When Goodman Brown returns to the town in the morning, his wife Faith is there to greet him; however, he does not believe her to be the ‘angel’ that he once thought her to be. He does not see the townspeople such as the minister and the deacon the way he used to. Despite his faith being beside him throughout his life, Goodman Brown ignores it, and, as a result, he becomes a “stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man.” Hawthorne is saying that without faith in the Lord and in humanity people will become the same type of person that Goodman Brown became.
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