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Doubt, Faith, And Trust In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

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Last year my husband applied for a specialized program, we thought for sure he was going to get in. When the names of those selected were release and my husband’s name was not on there we were both devastated. This tested our faith and trust in God greatly. However, we put our doubt aside and knew in our hearts that God has a plan and we just have to trust in his timing and his provision. My husband continued working on making himself a stronger candidate and hopefully this year will be the year.

Nathaniel Hawthorne gives great representation of doubt, faith, and trust in this story “Young Goodman Brown”. In the beginning of the story you can see Brown’s strong trust, in both his marriage and faith in God, as seen in the statement “Well, …show more content…

Hawthorne does a great job in the beginning of the story depicting Faith as a young pure woman by the representation of pink ribbons in her hair, this image would change as the story progresses (Hawthorne). As Brown heads down the darkened dreary road his views begin to change as well (Hawthorne). He walks alone speaking of solitude and fears of what devilish things could be lurking in the trees. Then he meets up with a man on this dreadful path he has found himself on but felt the need to take. This man is depicted as the devil, the one walking Brown down this road of doubt, and feeding is mistrust. Brown on multiple occasions seeks to return from this journey he is on but the cunning words of this fellow traveler draw him on. Such as, “Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not thou shalt turn back. We are but little way in the forest yet” (Hawthorne). Once he begins to have doubt about his purpose of being on this path leaders and officials that he knew and trusted come into the picture, drawing his farther into darkness. People he trusted greatly and even looked up too like the “exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin” begin to take on a new shade (Hawthorne). His

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Faith in “Young Goodman Brown”, Georgiana in “The Birthmark”, and Elizabeth in “The Minister’s Black Veil” are all very important characters throughout each of these stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne. They are not only each a large part of their own individual story, but they are used especially to reveal truth about the main male characters to which they are with. In “Young Goodman Brown”, Faith is the person to which Goodman Brown holds on to when he starts to be apprehensive and question the moral goodness of the people around him. Faith reveals that Goodman is testing his spiritual faith.

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The traveler had easily led Brown by the nose. At the end of the story, Brown had turned depressed, after he had seen the worst scene he had ever seen in his life, which cause all his beliefs to be overturned in one night. Brown could have go and investigate what had happened last night, or leave the village he lived, but among all the options he could choose from, he decided to live the rest of his life in despair, this shows Brown’s incapability of dealing incidents that came out

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In the exposition, Goodman Brown becomes doubtful of his ancestors, but he still trusts Faith and the Puritans. Firstly, he shows faith in God and his wife. Goodman Brown prompts Faith to pray before sleeping: “Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee” (Hawthorne 1). This quote characterizes Goodman Brown as a pious and incredulous young man because he wishes that God will protect Faith from harm. Then, Goodman Brown loses his certainty for his forefathers.

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Hawthorne says, “Something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch of a tree” Faith’s pink ribbons symbolize purity. In the beginning of the story was Faith had her ribbons she was pure but at the end of the story when Young Goodman Brown saw Faith’s pink ribbon come down from the sky it represents how she succumed to evil and Hawthorne lost both his faith and his wife Faith. The third example of how Hawthorne uses symbolism to show the theme good versus evil in the story “Young Goodman Brown” is when the devil is telling Brown and Faith that they will have a new perspective of life, a life where everyone sins. In the beginning of the story Young Goodman Brown saw his family as godly and he saw Faith as pure but the devil shows him that his views are naive and the devil gives him the capability to see the dark side of everything and everyone.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne uses his writings in both Young Goodman Brown and The Minister’s Black Veil, to portray the faith in these characters once they experience the reality of man’s sinful nature. Hawthorne writes the story of Young Goodman Brown to create awareness of the power of

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(Hawthorne) This example establishes Faiths allegorical function. Also, Young Goodman Brown is sort of an “Everyman” figure, a representative of humans who are seeking to experience one last “fling” with evil before committing to one’s faith. The symbolic meaning of his wife name “Faith” and the color of the ribbon in her hair clearly tells us what she represents. The authors style of lecturing morals is suggestive of the religious writing of the Old and New Testament.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne writes about the Puritan society’s ways. He talks about this adventure of Goodman Brown seeing the devil and many other common fears during the time of the Puritan society. Brown doesn’t know if what he saw was real or fake, so he doesn't inform anyone of this situation due to the society he is in. The character of Goodman Brown modifies the reader’s understanding of Puritan ideals of religion by using a dark tone. Hawthorne uses common fears to make the audience feel panicked.

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With that being said we move into how Faith is the literal symbol of faith itself for Goodman, this is where “The Overview of Young Goodman Brown” comes into play. Goodman “Perceives that she too has been corrupted, he rushes madly towards the witches gathering,” (“Overview”). This explains how since Faith is a symbol of faith itself for Goodman when he sees that he has lost it, he loses all trust in everyone he knows, including his wife. These pieces of evidence explain how Hawthorne’s use of figurative language plays a role in this short story, “The Overview of Young Goodman Brown” helps prove Hawthorne’s use of figurative language in the short

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Goodman Brown enters the forest knowing of such evil, he states in the story “what if the devil himself should be at my very elbow” (Hawthorne 322). Goodman Brown sees the minister and Deacon Gookin as well as many other townspeople making their way into the dark forest towards the ceremony. At this time, Nathaniel Hawthorne is displaying that many people of all ranks in religious and governmental society are sinners despite their external appearance. He holds on to the thoughts that as long as Faith remains holy, he shall find it in himself to resist the temptations of evil, but when he sees the pink ribbons from Faith’s cap his Christian faith is weakened. Hawthorne is using Goodman Brown’s wife, Faith, as a symbol of his own when he yells out “my faith is gone!”

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In the short story “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the symbolic significance of Young Goodman Brown’s wife Faith epitomizes the struggle and complexity that Young Goodman Brown endures with his own religious faith throughout the story. Faith is the idea of unyielding trust or belief in something or someone and in the case of Young Goodman brown, it’s faith in God. Because faith results in facing temptation, it is not uncommon for people to become unfaithful and leave their belief behind or ignore at life’s crossroads. Young Goodman Brown begins the story by journeying away from his wife Faith, “So they parted; and the young man pursued his way,” (para. 6). Not only is Young Goodman Brown leaving behind Faith, the person, but also what she symbolizes—his faith in God.

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“Hawthorne refers to Brown as ‘old’ and not as ‘young,’ as ‘Badman’ and not ‘Goodman’ toward the end of the story” (Cochran. 154.) demonstrates how Brown went from being a sacred human to a sinful corrupted being influenced by the ways of evil in a short period of time. Similar to the Salem Witch Trials, many (especially women) were accused of this shift, resulting in a crooked society full of transgression. Furthermore, Hawthorne symbolizes the two-faced personalities through the example of Faith’s pink ribbons in her hair. The color pink symbolizes compassion and playfulness, however, look between the lines that Hawthorne

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He believes that his Faith is salvageable, yet due to Hawthorne’s use of deliberate ambiguity, Goodman Brown does not know “whether Faith obeyed” him or not (395). Goodman Brown awakes the next morning unsure if his Faith remains intact, unsure how the hellish communion ended. His uncertainty causes him to distrust those around him, “he shrank from” the minister and “snatched away [a] child,” from Goody Cloyse (395). He even distrusts his own Faith, deciding not to speak to her and only “looked sternly and sadly into her face,” attempting to discern if Faith is without sin (395). As such, he commits the unpardonable sin, looking for sin in others.

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1 In Hawthorne 's essay “Young Goodman Brown”, does it matter whether or not the protagonist, Goodman Brown, dreamt the events in the story? The idea and drive behind religious faith and belief is a concept consistently explored in Young Goodman Brown (YGB). The story explores Brown 's journey in a single night which inexplicably ends with a tarnished perspective on religious faith as portrayed by his fellow villagers. Brown himself grows to be disillusioned on faith but the events leading up to this shift however, is ambiguous at best, with the debate mostly centred towards the notion that Brown merely dreamt the events, resulting in an unfair and biased outcome in terms of his sentiment towards the villagers and his own belief.

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Hawthorne portrays the Puritans as hypocrites. Going back on their word to God of keeping the faith and putting all their trust into him so that they won't be tempted to sin. One moment they were all a pious Puritan community together and the next moment they are all worshipping the devil and taking part in a communion taken part just outside their community. They are not as devout as they should be, and their lives are drenched in the lie of an illusion of being good people while deep inside, they don’t keep to the faith they are supposed it. Even Brown who struggled to keep his faith during the communion ended up leaving it after seeing how everything he believed was true turned out to be

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Conversely, Hawthorne did not trust man at all. He was a Transcendental Pessimist. He believed man was corrupt, and following his intuition would fail him in life. One of Hawthorne’s short stories, “Young Goodman Brown”, portrays the tale of a young Christian man who wanders into the forest and witnesses a witch-meeting that involves some of the people Goodman Brown thought to be some of the holiest people he knew: the church Deacon, the pastor, and even Brown’s own wife, Faith. After the witch-meeting incident in the woods, Brown wonders whether he witnessed the witch meeting, or if it was a creation of his own imagination: “quote”.

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