“Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is an allegory. Hawthorne's moral story is told through the perversion of a religious leader, Goodman Brown. Goodman is a Puritan minister who lets his excessive pride interfere with his relationships with the community after encountering the devil. The result is that Goodman lives the rest of his life in exile within his own community. "Young Goodman Brown" begins when Faith, Brown's wife, asks him not to go on an "errand." Goodman Brown tells his "love and (my) faith" that "this night I must turn away from you." When he speaks of his "love" and his "faith," he speaks to his wife, but he also speaks of his "faith" to God. He is venturing into the woods to meet the Devil and, in doing so, leaves his unquestionable faith in God to his wife. He decides that he will "hold on to her skirts and follow her to heaven." This is an example of excessive pride because he feels he can sin and meet the Devil because of this promise he made to himself. There is enormous irony in this promise because when Goodman Brown returns at dawn; he can no longer look at his wife with the same faith he had before. When Goodman Brown finally meets the Devil, he declares that the reason he was late was because "faith held me back a while." This statement has a double meaning because his wife physically prevented him from arriving at his meeting with the devil on time, but his faith in God psychologically delayed his meeting with the devil. The Devil had with him a staff that "had the likeness of a great black serpent." The stick that looked like a serpent is a reference to the serpent in the story of Adam and Eve. The serpent led Adam and Eve to their destruction by leading them to the Tree of Knowledge. The story of Adam and Eve is similar to that of Goodman Brown in that they are both searching for unfathomable amounts of knowledge. Once Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge they were expelled from their paradise. The devil's staff ultimately leads Goodman Brown to the devil's ceremony which destroys Goodman Brown's faith in his fellow man, thus expelling him from his utopia..