s commentators tend to interpret this verse in La Divina Commedia. Yet, when the reader reflects on Dante's verse and reads further on into the first chapter of La Divina Commedia a younger version of Dante would have had to have met an elderly version of himself with a far greater understanding of the ways of the world than the younger Dante. What Hawthorne seems to be suggesting with his allegorical story is that unlike Dante who’s guide led him through the Inferno and Purgatory Goodman Brown's guide was the serpent staff which judged all people as being evil and not being what they seem to be on the outside. This gloomy vision of the world that blinded Goodman Brown to the reality of the goodness in people is what doomed him in the end. This is the version that Dante does not talk about when someone finds himself or herself in a dark wood. Virgil is of course Dante alter ego. In a sense Virgil is the elderly Dante young Dante finds in the dark wood. It is after all the teachings of Virgil that caused Dante to be where he is. Virgil's teaching were basically pagan and in a sense has made Dante into his own image and likeness. Just as Virgil guides Dante through the ceremonial ritual of the baptism of fire in the Infernal and Purgatorial realms so to does the elderly Goodman Brown guide his younger self through the Saturday festivities of the Boston night life, which Hawthorne allegorically likens it to a meeting of the coven in the forest, where everybody is an equal. The meeting of the coven was to bring about the baptism of Goodman Brown into the secret mysteries of this fellowship of evil vices:"And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of wickedness, in this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the Shape of Evil dip his hand, and prepared ...
