The old traveler who comes for Goodman Brown is a figure
of ambiguity in Nathaniel Hawthorne's story "Young Goodman Brown." For, he resembles
the grandfather of Goodman Brown, as well as a demonic figure. His walking staff
suggests the staffs of the Egyptian magicians of the Old Testament who mocked Moses as
they appeared to turn their staffs into snakes:
...his staff, which bore the likeness of a great
black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle
itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must have
been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain
light.
When Goody Cloyse
appears on the path, the traveler stays on the path, and Brown hides lest she see him.
As she approaches, the traveler touches her with his staff which "seemed
the serpent's tail" and Goody screams, "The
devil!"
When Goody expresses her haste to attend the
witch-meeting,he traveler performs a similar trick: He gives Goody his twisted staff
and it changes just as the staffs of the "Egyptian
magi" changed.
After young Goodman Brown reaches the forest
and he observes the pink ribbons wafting to the ground, he grabs them and cries "My
Faith is gone!....Come, devil; for to thee is this world given." Having lost his faith
[double entendre], Goodman invokes the devil and now grasps his staff, going forth and
"seem[ing] to fly" he continues on the forest path, "...rushing onward with the instinct
that guides mortal man to evil," all the while he "brandishes his staff" with frenzied
gestures.
For the most part, the staff represents not the
religious staff of Christ, but the serpent of the devil. The traveler, the devil, is
described as "he of the serpentine staff," Goody Cloyse travels with the snakelike staff
of the traveler and seems to fly above as a witch while Goodman Brown holds a staff and
seems to fly with it.
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