Identify the major theme, character, and settings of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown".

Perhaps because his Puritan uncle, a magistrate who ordered the public whippings of a Quaker woman and his son John, a judge who presided over a witchcraft trial were both sanctimonious hypocrites themselves, and Nathaniel Hawthorne was so disturbed by the heinous sins of his relatives, this self-righteous character emerges throughout the works of Hawthorne.  In "Young Goodman Brown" Brown himself is such a character. 

He is so certain that he is one of the Puritan "elect" that he dares to go into the dark, sinister forest with the devil himself.  The social contextof Goodman's encounters with Goody Cloyse and Deacon Gurkin--real persons who participated in the involved in Devil's worship--is significant.  The time period is more significant than the place.  For, the time of the Puritans is pivotal to the development of character and theme. This outer reality is pivotal to the development of character in "Young Goodman Brown."

Theme, the central and unifying idea about human experience that grows out of all the other elements of the story, also develops because of the setting.  In "Young Goodman Brown," after his experience in the forest, Goodman concludes that all human beings are hopelessly corrupt, totally damned, and must, therefore, be rejected.  He remains a sanctimonious hypocrite because he rejects others when he himself "lost his Faith" figuratively, rather than literally as he interpreted the incidents.

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If the reader interprets "Young Goodman Brown" as an allegory, the Goodman represents a type of Everyman-- "Goodman" was a title beneath "gentleman"--who must test his faith.  His wife Faith represents Goodman's devotion; he tells others that "Faith has kept me back a while," but he plunges into the forest one night.  The dark primeval forest represents the environment in which Goodman explores his doubt as he pursues the Black Mass which symbolizes his descent into Hell where like a dream, he awakens and knows that he has lost his Faith.