What is Brown's purpose for going into the woods?

Young Goodman Brown gives his clinging, timid wife the impression that he has to go away on a business trip. However, there is considerable foreshadowing in the opening scene suggesting that he is deceiving her and has some entirely different destination in mind.

"Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.”

With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose.

The author does not state what that evil purpose might be, but the story itself reveals what it is at the climax. Young Goodman Brown, whom everyone regards as a nearly perfect man and ideal husband, is on his way to a devil-worshipping ceremony to be held in the woods. At the high point of the story, the author Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the ceremony with his characteristic brilliance in painting word pictures of settings. We can imagine the big fire lighting up the tall trees and lighting up the faces of many of the people from Young Goodman Brown's village whom he recognizes in attendance.

The great irony in "Young Goodman Brown" is that the timid little wife he thought he had left behind seems to be leading the whole orgy herself. She was mistaken about her husband's morals, but he was also mistaken about hers. Both have very dark sides to their characters which they steadfastly keep hidden from the world. But evidently the evil in their natures is like the pressure building up inside an active volcano and has to come out occasionally. This orgy is that outburst for Brown, his wife, and most of their friends and neighbors.

How did Brown's wife get there ahead of Brown? He left town before she did. A clue is to be found in the story. Brown meets a sinister man on the road who accompanies him on the rest of his journey and tells him:

“You are late, Goodman Brown,” said he. “The clock of the Old South was striking as I came through Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes agone.”

The young man really lacks his wife's aggressiveness and fearlessness. He has been proceeding at a slow pace because he dreads reaching his destination and also because, as the narrator tells us, he is afraid there might be Indians behind every tree. Also, it is very dark out there among the trees, and his wife could easily have slipped past without his knowing it.

So Brown's purpose for going into the woods is to attend a devil-worshipping orgy far away from town and farther away from normal civilized morality. He may have thought he was the only one from his community who would be there, but he finds out that everyone, including his sweet little wife, has the same evil impulses as himself. Was it all a bad dream? Or did it really happen?

Be it so if you will; but, alas! It was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream.