Hawthorne's Muddled Allusion: The Egyptian Magi in "Young Goodman Brown"

      Most of my students stumble and falter as they try to recognize and interpret allusions in the poems and short stories we are reading. Perhaps they will take comfort from learning that even a major writer like Nathaniel Hawthorne could stumble and falter as he created the allusion to begin with.

      In "Young Goodman Brown," for example, the old man in the forest parts with his serpent-shaped staff so that Goody Cloyse can ride it to the dark ceremony toward which everyone in the story seems to be headed:

      . . .he threw it down at her feet where, perhaps, it assumed life, being one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian Magi. . .[Goodman Brown] had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and looking down again beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff. ( paragraph #36)
      A close reading of the biblical source for the "Egyptian Magi" reference seems called for.

      The main point, of course, is that Goody Cloyse gets a ride on the Devil's staff, a staff which was once borrowed from Satan by sorcerers, and Hawthorne's intention is obviously to enhance our sense of the evil inherent in the old man in the forest; however, let us carefully read the source of the allusion to the "Egyptian Magi." It is a biblical text relating a contest pitting Aaron and Moses against the magicians who served the Pharoah:

      The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "When Pharoah says to you 'Perform a wonder,' then you shall say to Aaron, 'Take your staff and throw it down before Pharoah, and it will become a snake.'" So Moses and Aaron went to Pharoah and did as the Lord had commanded; Aaron threw down his staff before Pharoah and his officials, and it became a snake. Then Pharoah summoned the wise men and the sorcerers; and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same by their secret arts. Each one threw down his staff and they became snakes; but Aaron's staff swallowed up theirs. (Exodus 7: 8-12)

      It is always possible to read too much into any allusion. Nevertheless, a couple of tentative observations might be made here. First, if Hawthorne intended the snake-staff as a sign of Satan's impressive power, then he put the wrong staff into Satan's hands. Aaron's staff was the really powerful staff. He uses it to turn the Nile into blood, to fill every nook and cranny of Egypt with frogs, and finally to turn the dust of the earth into a vast cloud of gnats. Also, of course, Aaron's staff gobbled up all the snakes that the sorcerers could produce "by their secret arts." Compared to Aaron's staff, the magicians' snake-staffs are pitiful indeed. The second tentative observation is that nowhere in the biblical account is any mention made of Satan lending the Egyptian sorcerers rods of any kind, much less rods that turn into edible snakes. Did Hawthorne have some subtle meaning in mind, or did he merely muddle up the Bible story?

      The most probable explanation is that Hawthorne had the bible story slightly muddled in his memory. Probably most of us muddled that story before we actually went to the Bible itself and reread it carefully. For example, before checking the Bible text, most people think it was Moses' staff, not Aaron's. It seems pretty clear that Hawthorne's real point was to link the old man in the forest to Satan by means of some sort of magical snake staff. He botched up the details of the story; nevertheless, the allusion works even though some of the details are wrong.