The Dual Nature of Man in "Young Goodman Brown"

By: Davon Ferrara

In "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne tells the story of one man’s loss of faith in the human race. As Goodman Brown travels into the woods one night, he is sees the innermost secrets and desires of the people he once placed upon a pedestal. He sees that human are evil by nature, and this causes him to lose faith in his fellow man. By viewing the story as an allegory, the journey into the woods is associated with the Puritan concept of justification. The Puritans viewed justification, or the means by which one receives the salvation of Christ, as a psychological journey into the "hell (or evil) of the self" (Soler). Goodman Brown fails to complete his process of individuation because he cannot come to terms with the dual Apollonian and Dionysian nature of his being.

The Puritans believed that to be justified, one must let go of his worldly dependence and strive to live a life free of sin (Soler), making the story an allegory “in its treatment of the nature and consequences of the Puritan belief in the total depravity of man” (Waggoner 250). This would have had an impact on the development of the psyche, as the ego struggled to repress certain instincts that the superego deemed as sinful based on Puritanical beliefs.

To understand the effects that Puritanism has on the psyche, one must also realize that Puritanism depraved the human spirit of both Dionysian and Apollonian instincts. Even though it favored Apollonian in the sense that it supported a distancing from the world, it does not support the development of the individual, which is associated with Apollo. Puritan Society frowned upon expressing one’s individuality (that is why, besides the obvious dishonor, wearing a huge scarlet letter was not appealing in Puritan society because it sets apart the individual). The Apollonian nature of the human seeks to express itself through representations and illusions (such as art), which was regarded as vulgar to the Puritans. The Dionysian seeks to express itself through the performing arts (such as song or dance) (Foster 63-64). This was seen as sinful (one may recall the Salem witch-hunt was started when children were caught dancing in the woods). Brown, growing up Puritan, would have had both of these basic human instincts suppressed. This suggests that something must have brought forth the need for these instincts to express themselves.

The marriage of Brown and Faith may have brought these issues forward in his unconscious - or maybe even conscious - mind. Marriage would have “qualified” Brown to enter the communion of sinners through the sexual nature of the marriage bed. Sexual desires for his wife would have challenged Brown, because of the belief that sex was necessary only for reproduction – not pleasure (Male 78). Sexual desires are associated to the Dionysian (Foster 64). To handle the conflict between faith and desire, Brown would have to come to terms with them, thus introducing the Apollonian instinct of individuation.

Brown’s journey into the woods is his journey of individuation, as he must come to terms with the dark desires of his id. For the Puritans, the dark woods are a symbol "of mistrust of their own corrupt hearts and faculties" (this is also an archetypal symbol), which directly connects the woods with the id (Soler). The city would ideally be their civilized, perfectly moral world of the superego. The actual journey is the means by which the superego and id come to terms, and would represent the ego. Just as Brown describes his journey to Faith as something that "must needs be done ‘twixt now and sunrise" (Hawthorne 24), all human beings must make this same journey into the dark to complete the process of individuation. This journey must also take place in the dark because the dark is associated with the subconscious by its connection with dreams.

This process of individuation and dreams is closely associated with Apollo, as well is the concepts of restraining one’s desires. Nietzsche wrote:

But we must also include in our image of Apollo that delicate boundary which the dream image must not overstep lest it have a pathological effect (in which case mere appearance would deceive us as if it were crude reality). We must keep in mind that measured restraint, that freedom from the wilder emotions, that calm of the sculptor god…we might call Apollo himself the glorious divine image of the principium individuationis… (15-16)

Apollo is associated with the ordered, civilized part of human nature. This aspect of Apollo would have appealed to the Puritans; however, as mentioned before, they still would have repressed the desire to express one’s self.

Freud believed that dreams held the key to the subconscious processes. Since individuation is mostly a subconscious occurrence, it would show up in a person’s dreams. The question of dreams appears at both the beginning and the end of "Young Goodman Brown.” Faith begs her husband to put off his journey into the woods because she is afraid of the dreams that she would have that night. Since Faith is the personification of Goodman Brown’s religious faith, she is a part of the moral superego. When Brown journeys into the subconscious, his superego loses control. As he enters this dream state, he can no longer tell what is real or unreal. This allows his id to project itself into the conscious part of his psyche. In doing so, he not only sees his own sinfulness, but the sinfulness of others.

Terence Martin writes, "The question proposed to Goodman Brown is into which of these categories [dream or reality] good and evil belong” (83). Later he adds "The devil introduces a further notion of a dream by saying that Goodman Brown and Faith ‘had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream’" (83). Because doubt as to what was real or a dream is left in Brown’s mind after the journey, it casts a shadow over the way he perceives everyone else in the town. Are they actually good people or evil as the dream suggests? Brown cannot see them as having both good and evil natures. In the morning, he again questions whether he was dreaming or not, but the damage had already been done.

While in the woods, he sees all the people of the town mingling together, including those labeled as sinners. He hears them singing a hymn that "expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more" (Hawthorne 32). The common aspect of sin has brought everyone together into a "loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked" (Hawthorne 32). In a way, all the people were "intoxicated" with their sin. This connects the woods and the satanic congregation to the Dionysian side of human nature. Dionysus is associated with intoxication and the letting go of one’s restraints. Again, by applying Nietzsche, we can gain some insight into what happens to Goodman Brown in the woods. When one lets go of the Apollonian aspect of human nature by way of receiving a shock to their senses, the process of individuation breaks down. There is then a sudden feeling of terror, but at the same time there is a "blissful ecstasy" that comes up from the Dionysian aspect of the self (Nietzsche 16). Brown received a shock upon learning about the evil in his fellow Man, especially the Church leaders. His biggest shock came when he realized that his own Faith was also tainted. The sense of brotherhood he felt with the congregation was a result of the Dionysian. However, before he could join the rest of the human race in that brotherhood, he rejects the Dionysian, and thus rejects his fellow man.

The human psyche, however, cannot exist healthily when the basic instincts of the human spirit are repressed. Human nature needs both civilized and instinctual forces in order to function correctly. The result of this repression is that Brown not only separates himself from the dark desires of his unconscious, he now views the rest of the world as being evil. He loses his "Faith," and as a result loses any belief that good exists on the earth: "Come Devil; for to thee this world is given" (Hawthorne 30). This view of an evil world filled with evil beings may or may not be what Puritanism promotes; however, it is not a healthy way of seeing the world as the ending of the story reveals.

This rejection of the Dionysian has another affect besides separating Brown from the rest of the human species. The Apollonian –Dionysian conflict is a dualistic way of looking at human nature, making it polarized. Because of this dualism, whenever we see one part of the spirit, be it Apollo or Dionysus, the other must be present as well. They must work in a certain proportion to each other to make a person fully human (Foster 45). This dual nature is dependent upon each other to form the whole:

If polarization breaks down, if one pole asserts itself to the full exclusion of the other so that it is unable to contribute its force to a larger whole, the situation of polar nullities arises…The particular drive invested in one pole, when no longer polarized, turns upon itself and nullifies its own energies (Foster 48).

When Brown rejects the Dionysian, he does not just repress his Apollonian again, he loses that part of himself altogether as well.

We can see the effects of this, as Brown becomes the “ideal Puritan.” He loses his ability to express human instincts because of his loss of spirit and faith in humanity. For example, when the minister is reading stories of “triumph” from the Bible, Brown, instead of the natural human reaction of spiritual hope and pleasure, turns pale and dreads the evil of the minister. The story also suggests that he lost his desires in the marriage bed with the loss of Dionysus (the sexual desires) and Apollo (children are an expression of the self almost like a sculpture of their parents). Brown had a “goodly procession” of children and grandchildren, hinting that sex was only done for reproduction in the remainder of his gloomy life (Hawthorne 34). Thus, by separating himself from the world and part of his own spirit, Brown loses himself in the process.

Works Cited:

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Philosophical Writings. Grimm, Reinhold and Molina y Vedia, Caroline, eds. The German Library: Volume 48. Sander, Volkmar, Gen. Ed. The Continuum Publishing Company, New York, 1995.
Soler, Angie. "The Journey Into the Puritan Heart: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’" Dr. Jim Wohlpart. American Literature and Analysis Web Site. Florida Gulf Coast University. 1998.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Young Goodman Brown and Other Short Stories. Appelbaum, Stanley, ed. Dover Thrift Edition. General Publishing Company, Canada. 1992.
Martin, Terence. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Revised Edition. Twayne’s United States Authors Series. G.K. Hall & Company. Massachusetts. 1983.
Foster, Jr., John Burt. Heirs to Dionysus: A Nietzschean Current in Literary Modernism. Princeton University Press. New Jersey. 1981.
Male, Roy R. Hawthorne’s Tragic Vision. University of Texas Press. Austin. 1957.
Waggoner, Hyatt H. Hawthorne: A Critical Study. Harvard University Press. Massachusetts. 1955.