Young Goodman Brown

Definitely one of my favorite stories yet this semester. Not only was the story and actual story, (Not a bunch of text asking to be read into) but Hawthorn's style of writing is not only pleasant to read, but full of awesome imagery. The scene where he finally picks up to devil's staff and is marching through the forest was epic. Hawthorn describes all of the wickedness and evil in the forest then successfully makes the reader believe that among all of these things, he is the most wicked. "In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him." At the end, you are left a bit up in the air, and I was wondering if there was a right answer. Was it that the people of the town are in fact in cahoots with the devil and that is why he outcasts himself from them or was it that he was forever touched by his devilish experience and the thought put in his head are what keeps him away from his loved ones for the rest of his life? I assume it's the latter, a much more 'devilish' concept.