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Natasha Igl
Pennington
English 305
October 5th, 2016
“Young Goodman Brown” vs. the Id
Every day, people fight an invisible battle in their mind. According to Sigmund Freud,
people’s minds are made up of three different parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id and
the superego conflict with each other with the ego mediating between the two. Because of this
conflict, stress is put on the ego from having to constantly intercede. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
piece, “Young Goodman Brown,” shows the underlying struggle of the ego living with the battle
between the id and the superego. Relating Freud’s three parts of the mind to Hawthorne’s work,
Goodman Brown acts as the ego while the superego is found in his religious beliefs and the id in
the Devil. Through Goodman Brown’s walk with the Devil, he demonstrates the struggle that is
put on the ego from reconciling between the superego, his faith, and the id, the Devil.
Matching Hawthorne’s tale to Freud’s ideas, faith defines Goodman Brown’s superego.
The superego is a person’s moral conscience or Disney’s Jiminy Cricket, minus the song and
dance. Through a person’s superego, they learn to define right from and wrong (PenningtonCordell Sect. 3.3). Faith in religion is a strong influence on a person’s sense of morals, and
Goodman Brown’s moral compass rears its head as he walks with the Devil. As they walk, he
constantly tries to persuade the Devil of the righteousness of the Puritan people: “‘We are a
people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness” (Hawthorne 5).
Another instance, he tries to prove the pureness of the Puritans by calling on his family’s past:
“‘We have been a race of honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs…’”
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(Hawthorne 4). Each time Goodman utters something about his faith, the Devil tries to persuade
Goodman to follow him further along in the dark of the woods. Trying to dissuade the Devil
from continuing their walk, Goodman uses the root of his religion to aid him, an act of the
superego putting off the id: “‘With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against
the devil!’” (Hawthorne 8). When he continues to provide arguments to the Devil, he feels at
home with his spirituality. “The young man sat a few moments… thinking how clear a
conscience he should meet the minister in his morning walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old
Deacon Gookin” (Hawthorne 7). As the Devil tries to turn Goodman Brown on his side,
Goodman Brown remains stubborn to his faith. “‘What if a wretched old woman do choose to
go to the devil when I thought she was going to heaven: is that any reason why I should quit my
dear Faith and go after her?’” (Hawthorne 7). Due to his faith, Goodman wants to return to his
new bride and continue on what he sees as the righteous path of God. Through this, Goodman
Brown tries to listen more to his upbringing in religion than to the sweet talk of the Devil.
Representing the id as the Devil, Goodman Brown is shown the fall of others to their ids.
As they come across his old catechism teacher, Goody Cloyse, the Devil reveals she is not all
prayers and holiness: “‘Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?’” (Hawthorne 6). From the
Devil’s comment, it is shown that Goody Cloyse has a closer relationship to the Devil than one
would perceive. Hawthorne writes her in the likeness of a witch, searching for her broom and
potions. Eventually, the entire town appears to be in cahoots with the Devil:
“Among them…appeared faces that would be seen next day at the council board of the
province, and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and
benignantly over the crowded pews from the holiest pulpits in the land” (Hawthorne 10).
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Goodman Brown looks despairingly on as he tries to compute what he sees with what he has
presently believed. The Devil proceeds to define the bare nature of the id during the initiation of
the gathering. “Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome
again, my children, to the communion of your race” (Hawthorne 12). Following this statement,
Goodman Brown is presented with the problem of the id. The id is the more basic instinct of a
person (Pennington-Cordell Sect. 3.3). In the article “Against Wholeness: The Ego’s Complicity
in Religion,” Volney Gay comments on how the id is the aggressive drive to meet the pleasure
principle of Freud’s theory (Gay 10). Basing its drive toward obtaining what it sees as its needs,
the id creates trauma on the ego by corrupting what the superego believes. At the base of the id,
it is the blatant nature of humankind.
Because of the struggle between the id and the superego, Goodman Brown transforms
from a general “good man” to a broken one: “A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if
not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream” (Hawthorne 13). From
trying to mediate between his religious beliefs and the base nature of people, Goodman Brown
corrupts his own healthy being. Freud believed that when people’s egos could not handle the
constant struggle between the id and superego that those people would develop a mental illness
(Pennington and Cordell Sect. 3.3). Goodman Brown displays this as he grows paranoid of the
people around him and distrustful. Socially, he cannot function in the town after his conflict
with the Devil and his spiritual beliefs continue. In his mind, Goodman Brown cannot remedy
the fact that so many people fell to their ids and ignored their own superego’s spiritual beliefs.
What would be normal interactions no longer remain the same: “The good old minister was
taking a walk along the graveyard…and bestowed a blessing, as he passed, on Goodman Brown.
He shrank from the venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema” (Hawthorne 12). Another
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instance where Goodman Brown functions differently is when he comes across his old catechism
teacher:
“Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine at her lattice,
catechizing a little girl who had brought her a pint of mornings milk. Goodman brown
snatched away the child as from the grasp of the fiend himself” (Hawthorne 12-13).
After taking a walk with the Devil, Goodman Brown cannot find solace as easily in his faith. He
is shaken and torn. In the article “Against Wholeness: The Ego’s Complicity in Religion,”
Volney Gay claims that the ego “renounces part of potential powers” through a person’s reliance
on religion (Gay 11). Such a person is unable to question certain parts of life because of his or
her religious beliefs. As Gay puts it, the ego tries to “heal” that which the id and superego
destroy in search of “binding” or satisfying pleasure (Gay 10). Goodman Brown shows the
damage of roping in the two as he grows bitter in the end. No longer can he muster the energy to
fully mediate between the forces, turning him to the extreme of sourness. “And when he had
lived long and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse…they carved no hopeful verse upon his
tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom” (Hawthorne 13). With his despairing belief and the
Devil constantly lurking, the ego of Goodman Brown cannot live in peace.
In Hawthorne’s short work, “Young Goodman Brown,” Goodman Brown embodies the
strain of the ego that comes from constantly mediating. Constantly having to intercede between
the superego and the id eventually exhausts the ego to frustration and stress. As shown by
Goodman Brown, this stress can lead to an unhappy life and social disaster. In the end,
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Goodman Brown dies an unhappy, solitary man because of his failure in compromising between
the two other parts of his mind.
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Works Cited
Gay, Volney P. "Against Wholeness: The Ego's Complicity in Religion." Journal of the
American Academy of Religion 47.4 (1979): 539-55.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” Literature: A Portable Anthology. 3rd ed.
Gardner, Janet, et. al., eds. Bedford, 2013. 3-13.
Pennington, John, and Ryan Cordell. Writing about Literature through Theory. Flat World
Knowledge, 2013.