Goodman Browns feeling of brotherhood with evil, the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart, seems like a significant part of his...

Ultimately,
it should be noted that the entire story has an ambiguity to it, to the point that we can't
really know whether his encounter with the devil or the sabbath was real at all or whether it
was a dream. Likewise, the answer to your question has a similar kind of ambiguity to it, in
that one could make arguments for both sides of the question. Personally, I'd suggest that it
was probably a mixture of both.

I think it's safe to say that, from the
beginning, Brown is under the Devil's influence. He walks beside the Devil and converses with
him, but this in itself does not mean he's initially in active brotherhood with the Devil, but
it does mean that, at the very least, he's vulnerable to it, and tempted by it.

The one thing I do want to note, is that a lot of his faith hinges on his faith in
others, particularly his wife, the aptly named Faith. She is his touchstone, and it's not until
his faith in her...