Explain the allegory Hawthorne uses in Young Goodman Brown.

This story is
anrepresenting the path of a Christian on his way to salvation or damnation. Goodman Brown
represents this "every Christian" sort of character; his surnameBrownis a very common
one for this reason.

While this text seems to support the idea that every
person is capable of sin, it also appears to confirm the idea that life is comprised of a series
of choices where we must consciously and continually strive to avoid temptation and choose a
righteous and faithful path. Goodman Brown could choose not to go into the forest, as his wife
asks, but he goes anyway. He has many opportunities to turn back, but he never does. He
consistently chooses temptation. 

Brown's wife, Faith, stands in for
Christian faith, the faith which Brown abandons when he leaves her at home to go into the
forest. He doesn't intend to abandon his faith (or his wife, Faith) forever, just for one night,
and then he plans to "'cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven.'" In other words,
he doesn't want to do the hard work of living a righteous life, constantly turning away from
sin. Instead, he wants to embrace sin for a time and then resume his faith, as though this is
something a good Christian can do. The story shows that either a person has faith or does not;
we cannot pick and choose when we want to exercise faith and when we want to conveniently leave
it behind in order to satisfy some sinful desire. By consciously abandoning his faith, Brown
alienates himself from God, showing that when any Christian behaves in such a way, his or her
spiritual life will be likewise ruined. Even when Brown tries to go back, he cannot; the
remainder of his life is miserable. He can no longer find joy because he turned his back on
God.