Nathaniel Hawthorne, born July 4, 1804, was five generations removed from his Puritan American forefathers (Perkins, Bradley, Beatty & Long, 1990). He grew up in Salem, Massachusetts amidst genteel poverty, raised by a widowed mother and with two young sisters. This atmosphere was filled with Puritan ideals and pride in his family's prosperous past that greatly affected his later writings (Perkins, et. al., 1990; Marx, 1980). This "led him to a long investigation of moral and social responsibility" (Perkins, et. al, 1990, p. 734). In his writings he attacked "intolerance, the hypocrisy that hides the common sin, and the greed that refuses to share joy...withdrawal from mankind, cynical suspicion, arrogant perfectionism...whatever divorces the pride-ridden intellect from the common heart of humanity" (p. 734).
Of the four stories, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, "The Minister's Black Veil," and "Young Goodman Brown," the latter is the first story where Hawthorne explored human pride and hypocrisy in the Puritan faith. Although the story itself is simple and short, Hawthorne takes up the reader's attention with a description of the state of mind of the young, Goodman Brown. Being convinced by a form (assumed to be Satan by both his words and the serpentine staff that he carries) that looks similar to Goodman Brown's grandfather, Goodman Brown has decided to go explore the option of witchcraft and devil worship. This form tries to entice Brown, after Brown voices doubts, by telling him that it was he who helped Brown's grandfather lash the Quaker woman through the streets, as well as helped Brown's father set fire to an Indian village. Hawthorne uses these two examples specifically to point to the cruel outcome that the Puritan faith has on its believers who are so blinded by pride in their belief that they think there can be no other way of life. Finally, when Goodman Brown sees people that he has "revere...