As Young Goodman Brown is led deeper and deeper into the forest by the Devil, he approaches a Witches' Sabbath amid the burning trees. He hears a lone female voice, lamenting some sorrow, and he fears that it is the voice of his wife, Faith, whom he left at home when he went into the forest. Although she implored him to stay at home with her, he would not, determining that he would go just once more into the forest and then "'cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven.'" However, this is an abuse of his Christian faith, something which one cannot simply pick and choose when to exercise and when to leave behind. In the woods, then, he sees one of Faith's pink ribbons flutter from the sky above and catch on a tree near him. Convinced that this means that she, too, is attending the Witches' Sabbath, he cries out that his "'Faith is gone!'" meaning both that his wife's innocence is gone as well as that his own faith has vanished too.
No comments:
Post a Comment