In Young Goodman Brown- To what extent are we as readers asked to agree with the devil’s speech about evil being “the nature of mankind”? Do you agree? | Young Goodman Brown Questions & Answers

I personally believe that Goodman Brown was a lost soul who who placed what he knew to himself as "Faith" in the people he knew and trusted because it's what he knew from them to be the right way. He loved Faith and wanted to be with her so badly, but he couldn't seem to convice himself to stay. As he traveled on, he wandered further and further from Faith, until Faith herself was under the influence of evil. Why? In a time of little freedom, he was pursuaded to believe something he couldn't truly believe, so he convinved himself that he understood until it eventually drove him to paranoia and insanity. So, his view on the evil nature of humanity would be one of paranoia, turning what he had locked up inside against the ones he had so long tried to convince himself to follow, in search for understanding of himself, humanity and of life's mysteries.

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