For once, watching a movie instead of doing my homework earlier today might have proved beneficial.

I think that Goodman Brown and Benjamin Braddock of The Graduate have very similar experiences as the come of age and learn of their society's faults.

First off, both naïve characters come from comparable backgrounds. Although Ben may belong to a modern day, upper class family and Brown to a colonial Puritan society, their lives are based on huge pretensions. Ben’s family appears pleased with their parties, children’s success, new cars, and materialism. Moreover, Goodman Brown insists that his family, a “race of honest men and good Christians since the days of martyrs,” has never interacted with the vice. However, both groups actually have many hidden problems.

Then, the characters meet the devil – or Mrs. Robinson in Ben’s case – who reveals reality. During Ben’s affair, he discovers that his allegedly decent, well-to-do family and their friends and society value something completely superficial. Their happiness grows on the things that do not truly matter. Mrs. Robinson reveals that although she lives an ideal life, with a big house with an affluent husband, she is completely and secretly dissatisfied with her life. The image that she and her peers display is not reflective of their actual feelings – it’s all false. Goodman, too, learns of his family’s affections as the devil recalls helping his grandfather lash “the Quaker women so smartly through the streets of Salem” and supplying wood for his father to “set fire to an Indian Village.” They preach lives of absolution, peace, and dedication to God, yet they act violently and sinfully. Hence, both Ben and Goodman Brown gain insight into the negative aspects of their society.

On the converse, at the end of their journeys, each character reacts differently to their discoveries. Benjamin uses the flaws of his parents and their friends as justification to escape their society. They give him the courage to leave it He turns a negative into a positive as he sheds his ties. Goodman Brown, on the other hand, does not take his findings in the same manner. They actually put a damper on his life. After the Devil leads him to decide that “there is no good on the earth; and sin is but a name; to [the devil] is this world given,” he chooses to reject all of society. Even after his wife tries to kiss him, he looks “sternly and sadly into her face, and [passes] on without a greeting.” He becomes “a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not desperate man” with no faith in anything. He no longer trusts the minister and the congregation’s holy psalms sound like “anthems of sin.” His discovery of his corrupt society directs him toward a depressing life.