Whether Young Goodman Brown dreamed the night in the forest is a question the reader must decide for himself. To me, it doesn't matter whether it's a dream or not because Young Goodman Brown believes in his heart and soul that it did happen, and this changes the rest of his life. Brown makes the decision to give up on humankind and believe his wife and friends are evil, and he spends the remainder of his life alone, feeling that evil has won out over good. The Puritans believed that all people are evil because of the "original sin" committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It is only through belief in God and living a pure life that man can overcome evil. Brown's night in the forest, whether a dream or reality, takes away his belief in humanity. The Black Mass in the forest forces Brown to see himself as just one evil part of a corrupt race of sinners.
Goodman realizes that Faith, his wife, is now a witch. In essence, he’s lost his faith. He then wakes up in the woods unsure as to whether or not it was all a dream.
So there you have it, the age old “was that a dream” feeling when you wake up in a strange place, not knowing how you got there. Though, similar thoughts may include “where am I,” “What did I do,” and “What did I drink?” Either way, he’s in the woods, and once he arrives back in town, he can’t come to terms with what he has seen, and he lives his life out in gloom, unable to trust even his own wife.
, I really want to question whether or not what Goodman saw was real. I, for one, find it hard to believe that you would just happen upon a man in the woods who leads you to a witch’s meeting whose coven you are unwittingly inducted to. It doesn’t make sense. When a group of people are found by a random stranger, the first instinct is to get rid of the person who found them, not make them a member of their secret society. Also, it’s difficult to make stuff float.