At the end of this story, not so young anymore Goodman Brown, finally passes away, and as Hawthorne states “And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grand-children, a goodly procession, besides neighbors, not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tomb

Once Goodman Brown returns from his mysterious journey, it seems as though the journey has distanced him , for no longer is he optimistic, or affectionate with his loving wife, for whom he couldn’t bear to leave the day before. He has faded from an idealist to “a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man...” (2194) “Often awakening suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith” (2195).

Although the controversy remains, did “Goodman Brown fall asleep in the forest, and only dream a wild dream of witch-meeting?”, or did he have a true encounter with the devil himself, and his devoted followers? The argument could be made that it was just an evil nightmare that haunted Goodman Brown f

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