Why would an upright young citizen of Salem, with a new wife and a proud family tradition behind him, risk the good opinion of his neighbors, all for a romp in the woods with the wicked? If society is rotten to the core, and your minister, your Sunday school teacher, even the spirit of your pious old father, are all secretly in league with – well, your Sunday school teacher calls him the “devil.”  If everyone you looked up to has already given way to evil, and you’ve already promised to meet – you know, that guy – in the forest at midnight, what’s the point of resisting? American Lit Podcast #2: Nathaniel Hawthorne “Young Goodman Brown”