In the story of "Young Goodman Brown", I feel that Hawthorne is trying to symbolically show that evil is always lurking in the foreground of our being regardless of our faith in God and our Christianity, and our faith in our fellow men. That we no matter what the circumstance will find ways to justify our wrongfulness just as Goodman Brown was justifying his when he stated, " and after this one night I"ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven." Although we know that what we sometimes may do is wrong, we find reason just as the devil was trying to get Goodman Brown to do, "Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not shalt turn back." Just as Goodman Brown compared himself with his father and grandfather, "My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him." We search for others to compare ourselves with as well, not truly knowing what they would do. I believe that this shows how we let others influence us whether we want them to or not, and although we think that we are in control of our actions, sometimes we do allow influences of inequity to enter our lives through justification and reasoning. For instance, when Goodman Brown is traveling the path and runs into his catechism teacher as a youth and spiritual advisor, Goody Cloyse. Here is where Goodman Brown discovers everyone at some point in time is vulnerable to conversion of inequity, and it is reiterated especially when he later hears voices and hides finding out that too the minister and Deacon Gookin are traveling the same path as he, " "Of the two, reverend sir," said the voice like the deacon's, "I had rather miss an ordination dinner than to-night's meeting."" Goodman Brown looked up to the minister and the Deacon Gookin of the church, only to stumble on the vulnerability of their encounters of conversion of inequity.
