The Devil (The Old Traveller)

The Devil appears as a calm, well-dressed, middle-aged traveler who looks strikingly like Goodman Brown himself. Hawthorne notes that an observer might mistake them for father and son, or even the same man at different ages. He carries a staff carved to resemble a writhing serpent, a detail that evokes the deceiver of Eden and signals his true identity before he speaks.

The Devil persuades Brown through patient, irony-laced revelation instead of force or threats. Each time Brown hesitates, the Devil reveals another respected Salem figure as his ally—Brown's grandfather, his father, Goody Cloyse, Deacon Gookin, the Minister—systematically dismantling every pillar of Brown's faith in human goodness. When Brown refuses outright, the Devil walks ahead and leaves his serpent-staff on the ground, knowing curiosity and doubt will pull Brown along.

Goody Cloyse is a longtime disciple of the Devil who recognizes him instantly when they meet in the forest, greeting him with the familiarity of a long-standing relationship. She laments having to walk to the ceremony because her broomstick—borrowed with the Devil's own grease—has gone missing. For Brown, who watched this woman teach him his catechism, the encounter reveals her lifetime of piety as a complete deception.

Faith is the Devil's final and most devastating instrument: she is the one person Brown clings to as proof that goodness exists. Her apparent presence at the forest ceremony—heralded by a pink ribbon falling from the night sky—destroys Brown's last refuge of hope. The Devil never even needs to present the ribbon himself; the forest delivers it, making the coup de grâce feel inescapable rather than orchestrated.

At the ceremony, the Devil acts as high priest, presiding over a congregation of every moral and civic leader of Salem. He delivers a welcoming address to Brown and Faith, inviting them to recognize the secret guilt hidden in every human heart. It serves as the ideological climax of his strategy: not to terrify Brown into sin, but to convince him that universal corruption renders virtue a fiction.

The resemblance suggests that the Devil may be as much an internal projection as an external agent—a personification of the suspicion, pride, and latent cynicism already present within Brown. Hawthorne uses this doubling to indicate that Brown's corruption does not require a literal supernatural visitor; the appointment in the forest was pre-arranged, implicating Brown in his own undoing before the story begins.

Yes, fully—whether the night is real or a dream does not alter the outcome. By exposing every trusted figure in Salem as his follower, the Devil irrevocably destroys Brown's capacity for trust. Brown returns to Salem unable to pray with his wife, look his minister in the eye, or believe in anyone's goodness. He lives and dies a bitter, isolated man, representing the Devil's complete and lasting triumph.

Hawthorne frames the Devil as more than a conventional supernatural antagonist—he serves as a personification of the structural hypocrisy embedded in Puritan society. His circle of converts includes civic leaders, deacons, and ministers, suggesting that the evil he represents is communal and systemic rather than isolated. His physical resemblance to Brown further positions him as a mirror of humanity's universal vulnerability to corruption, making him as much a social symbol as a supernatural figure.