A lot happens in that story, which is amazing, because it is a fairly short story. I'll try and pick 5 main events that walk you through some of the highlights.
Event one: Young Goodman Brown leaves his house. His wife begs him to stay, but he leaves anyway claiming that his travels need to happen right then.
My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done 'twixt now and sunrise.
Event two: Young Goodman Brown comes across a man waiting for him in the forest. The reader will soon find out that the man is the Devil.
Event three: The Devil tells Goodman Brown that all kinds of people have communion with the Devil.
The deacons of many a church have drunk the communion wine with me; the selectmen of divers towns make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General Court are firm supporters of my interest. The governor and I, too—But these are state secrets.
Event four: Young Goodman Brown is shown all kinds of people that he thought were good Christians. Each person he is shown has had dealings with the Devil. People like Goody Cloyse and even the minister have had dealings with the Devil.
Event five: Goodman Brown resists the Devil but is mentally and spiritually destroyed when he sees that his wife communes with the devil as well.
Event six. Goodman Brown returns to the village a broken man. He trusts nobody ever again. Not even his wife.
When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, waking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away.
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