to be of the elect, Goodman Brown falls into self-doubt after three months of marriage which to him represents sin and depravity as opposed to salvation. His journey to the forest is symbolic of Christian "self-exploration" in which doubt immediately supplants faith. At the end of the forest experience he loses his wife Faith, his faith in salvation, and his faith in human goodness. Interpretation of Impossible Perfection One interpretation of the text is as an allegory to emphasize how perfection as impossible, through interactions in the forest. The author introduces the shadowy figure as an "elder person as simply clad as a younger, [with] an indescribable air of one who knew the world". The author depicts this evil figure as not only similar to Goodman Brown, but also more educated in his age. After establishing the dark figure’s legitimacy, he delivers a message that only the young and naïve believe that perfection can be achieved. The devil claims to have helped his father "set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's war." By shattering Young Goodman Brown's conception that his fathers were paragons of Puritan ideals, Young Goodman Brown began his slow descent until his "dying hour of gloom," setting up a perspective that perfection is merely an illusion by showing how believers set themselves up for a sad death. Similarly, the futility of perfection can also be ascertained at the final Devil meeting. The first thing Goodman Brown hears when he arrives is "a familiar [tune] in the choir of the village meetinghouse." This comparison brings to mind a setting in which the piety and perfection preached by the church contrasts the reality of human imperfection. True to its set up, the dark sable figure presumed to be the devil delivers a conversion speech for the Goodman Brown by lecturing how Puritans "shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward.... This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households." By highlighting the "wanton words" and "secret deeds" that Puritans conceal in fear of being found out, the devil elucidates the hypocrisy that the Puritans center their life upon; indeed, Young Goodman Brown's world shatters when he realizes that what appears to be "lives of righteousness" are actually tainted by