This is of course a very subjective question and your
answer to it is going to depend on a number of other questions concerning the story and
how you interpret it. Is it just a dream, or does it have some basis in reality? This is
a key question that will definitely influence your answer to the question you have
asked.
From my perspective, I actually think that strongest
character is Faith and the weakest is Goodman Brown. If you consider that Goodman
Brown's experiences were a dream, it is Faith who shows herself to be faithful and true
and the strongest of all the characters. She is able to sense that something evil is
going to happen that night, and entreats her husband to stay, but also accepts his
decision to go. In spite of how he is transformed by his experience, we are told that
Faith remained, aptly enough, faithful to him and they lived all their lives
together.
Goodman Brown in my opinion shows himself to be
the weakest character because of the ease in which his experience transforms him. His
revelation of the evil within us all sucks all joy and happiness out of his life. Note
how he is described at the end:
A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a
distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful
dream.
So dark and gloomy
does he become that we are told that on his death no "hopeful verse" was carved onto his
gravestone, because after his experience his life was characterised by gloom and nothing
else. To have been affected so profoundly and then to make the lives of others a misery
shows a weakness and perhaps a childlike innocence.
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