As his name conveys, Goodman Brown naively believes that his community is sin free, without any malice or evil intent. He cannot concede that in his world both good and bad dwell together. He leaves behind Faith, his aptly named wife, and heads out for a clandestine meeting in the dark of nature, with the gloomiest of trees and a path closing in on itself as he passes. Around him, shadows fall, as if passing "through an unseen multitude."
             "There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," he says to himself, glancing fearfully around and adding, "What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!" He is not sure if what he see is real or the dreams of exhaustion. Soon, he meets a second traveler, looking much older and wiser, despite his attire that is as simple as Goodman Brown's. Whether this is indeed the devil or Brown's imagination come alive remains unknown.
             Brown tries to resist the enticements of this man "of the serpent," to go deeper into the dark woods, recalling his family's righteousness that supposedly never strayed from a pure life: "My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians, since the days of the martyrs. And shall I be the first of the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept."
             Goodman learns, however, that he is only recalling one side of his family and purposely forgetting the other. This man explains to Goodman that he helped his "grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem." He also brought Goodman's father "a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's War."
             If this is not enough to break Goodman's idealism, his belief in his spiritual and religious leaders is also destroyed. Hidden in the recesses, he overhear...