Young Goodman Brown
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40 free Young Goodman Brown trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown is one of the most assigned short stories in American literature, and one of the strangest. A newly married man walks out of his village one evening, keeps an appointment in the woods, and comes home unable to trust anyone he knows. This quiz follows the story from the doorstep to the graveyard: what Brown sees and hears among the trees, who turns up along the way, what the stranger tells him about his family, and how one night changes the rest of his life. It also covers the background readers are usually asked about, including Hawthorne's own Salem ancestry, the real people behind some of the characters, and what later writers made of the tale. It works as a reading check before class, a revision aid for an exam or essay, or a discussion starter for a book group. Every answer comes with a short explanation that points back to the text.
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Q 01In Young Goodman Brown, the word 'Goodman' is not a first name but which kind of Puritan-era label?
A polite title
A polite title, Goodman was used where 'Mister' would be today, though for a man of slightly lower social rank.
Q 02Which horror novelist wrote 'The Man in the Black Suit' as a homage to Young Goodman Brown?
Stephen King
Stephen King has called Hawthorne's tale one of the ten best stories written by an American. His homage won an O. Henry Award.
Q 03What role did an ancestor of Nathaniel Hawthorne play in the Salem witch trials of 1692?
A judge
A judge, and unlike fellow judge Samuel Sewall he is not known to have repented, which left his novelist descendant deeply ashamed.
Q 04What did Nathaniel Hawthorne add to his surname, probably to set himself apart from his forebears?
The letter w
The letter w turned Hathorne into Hawthorne in his early twenties, soon after college, separating him from two notoriously harsh ancestors.
Q 05What does the narrator of Young Goodman Brown suggest the witch meeting in the forest may have been?
Only a dream
Only a dream, perhaps: the narrator asks whether Brown simply fell asleep in the forest, then adds 'Be it so if you will' and never settles it.
Q 06What flutters down from the night sky and convinces Goodman Brown that his wife Faith is lost?
A pink ribbon
A pink ribbon like those on Faith's cap catches on a branch after voices pass overhead. 'My Faith is gone!' he cries, and he dares the devil to come.
Q 07In Young Goodman Brown, what creature does the older traveller's remarkable walking staff resemble?
A black snake
A black snake, so finely carved that it seems to twist and wriggle like a living thing, is an early clue that the stranger is the devil.
Q 08Which 1850 novel by the author of Young Goodman Brown is also set in Puritan New England?
The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter opens with a preface about Hawthorne's three years in the Salem Custom House, which annoyed the local politicians it described.
Q 09How does Goodman Brown respond when Faith joyfully runs to meet him in the street next morning?
He passes without a greeting
He passes without a greeting, looking 'sternly and sadly into her face', though Faith had skipped along the street and almost kissed him.
Q 10What does the old woman on the forest path in Young Goodman Brown say has been stolen from her?
Her broomstick
Her broomstick has 'strangely disappeared', she tells the devil, so she must go to the gathering on foot, and she blames a fellow witch.
Q 11Like Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Young Goodman Brown is usually read as which kind of story?
An allegory
An allegory gives its characters names that stand for ideas, such as Faith, and this one is read as a story about finding evil in everyone.
Q 12Which pious old woman, met on the forest path in Young Goodman Brown, taught the hero his catechism?
Goody Cloyse
Goody Cloyse shares her name with Sarah Cloyce, a real woman accused at Salem in 1692 who survived, though two of her sisters were executed.
Q 13At what time of day does Goodman Brown kiss Faith goodbye and set out from Salem village?
At sunset
At sunset he leaves, promising to be back by sunrise, so the whole errand belongs to the hours of darkness.
Q 21According to the devil, whom did Goodman Brown's constable forebear lash through Salem's streets?
A Quaker woman
A Quaker woman was the victim, a detail from Hawthorne's own family history: his first American ancestor had Quakers whipped in the streets of Salem.
Q 22Which town does the devil say he left only fifteen minutes before meeting Goodman Brown near Salem?
Boston
Boston's Old South clock was striking as he came through, he says, a first hint that the soberly dressed stranger travels by unnatural means.
Q 23What word does Young Goodman Brown use for the Native priests who join the witch meeting?
Powwows
Powwows are said to know 'almost as much deviltry as the best of us', as one rider puts it on his way to the gathering.
Q 14What excuse does Goodman Brown give the devil for arriving late to their meeting in the forest?
His wife delayed him
His wife delayed him: 'Faith kept me back a while,' he says, a line that also admits his religious faith almost stopped him from going.
Q 15What does Goodman Brown cry out for Faith to do just before the witch meeting vanishes?
Look up to heaven
Look up to heaven 'and resist the wicked one', he shouts, and at once he is alone in the calm night, never learning whether she obeyed.
Q 16What do the mourners in Young Goodman Brown leave off the hero's tombstone in the final sentence?
A hopeful verse
A hopeful verse is missing 'for his dying hour was gloom', even though he lived long and was followed to the grave by children and grandchildren.
Q 17In Young Goodman Brown, which Christian rite does the devil prepare to mimic at the hollowed rock?
Baptism
Baptism is the rite: he dips his hand in a natural basin that may hold water, blood or liquid flame, ready to mark the converts' foreheads.
Q 18Which 1846 Hawthorne collection first printed Young Goodman Brown under its author's name?
Mosses from an Old Manse
Mosses from an Old Manse took its name from the Concord house where Hawthorne and his wife spent the first three years of their marriage.
Q 19Whom does Goodman Brown call a 'wizard' on overhearing his morning prayers through an open window?
Deacon Gookin
Deacon Gookin is the 'wizard': the night before, Brown heard the same voice riding to the witch meeting, anxious not to miss it.
Q 20In which conflict does the devil claim he helped Goodman Brown's father burn an Indian village?
King Philip's War
King Philip's War of 1675–1678 pitted the New England colonies against a coalition of Algonquian tribes, placing Brown's father among its Puritan soldiers.
Q 24Which trees blaze like candles around the altar rock in Young Goodman Brown, their trunks untouched?
Pines
Pines, four of them, burn 'like candles at an evening meeting', turning the clearing into a dark copy of a church service.
Q 25Which figure in the smoke seems to throw out a hand to warn Goodman Brown back from the altar?
His mother
His mother, he thinks, is the woman 'with dim features of despair', while the shape of his dead father beckons him forward.
Q 26Which real woman hanged at Salem in 1692 helps lead Faith to the altar in Young Goodman Brown?
Martha Carrier
Martha Carrier 'had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell', the narrator says, repeating a charge her accusers made in 1692.
Q 27When the witch meeting vanishes, what does a once-burning twig sprinkle on Goodman Brown's cheek?
Cold dew
Cold dew falls from a twig that had seemed all on fire, and the altar rock feels chill and damp, as if no flame had ever touched it.
Q 28What does Goodman Brown do on seeing his old catechism teacher instructing a little girl?
Snatches the child away
Snatches the child away 'as from the grasp of the fiend himself', although the girl had only brought the old woman a pint of morning milk.
Q 29The old woman on the path says the devil looks the very image of which relative of Goodman Brown?
His grandfather
His grandfather was her 'old gossip', she says, which fits the devil's boast that he has long been well acquainted with the Brown family.
Q 30Which fellow novelist called Young Goodman Brown 'deep as Dante' in an essay on Hawthorne's tales?
Herman Melville
Herman Melville made the comparison in 1850, in an essay printed under a pseudonym less than two weeks after the two writers first met at a picnic.