Evil In Young Goodman Brown

Ominous settings symbolize the evil within characters and suggest that more darkness exists in the world than they predict. In “Young Goodman Brown,” Brown embraces his internal evil in an evil setting. Brown walks toward a “red light… with the instinct that guides a mortal man to evil” (page) on his way to the evil ceremony. Goodman Brown follows a red light that may represent evil since red is often associated with the devil. He follows this evil light out of “instinct,” which suggests that an inner evil guides him. The evil ceremony may also represent his internal evil because there he deserts his faith and embraces the evil within himself thus gaining a pessimistic view of the world. The setting where the evil ceremony takes place suggests

Like the evil ceremony represents the evil in Brown, the loft represents the evil in Hulga in “Good Country People.” Like Brown, Hulga goes specifically to this location to execute an evil purpose: she wishes to corrupt Manley’s “innocence.” She sits in the loft close to “a dark ridge of woods,” under a “cloudless and cold blue sky” (page). This strange and foreboding setting foreshadows the dark outcome of Hulga’s plan. For Hulga, like for Brown, evil places reflect evil desires. The stories’ settings also suggest that evil is unavoidable. Brown walks through the “gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely [stand] aside to let the narrow path creep through, and [close] immediately behind” (page). As Brown walks further into the darkness, the trees literally imprison him. The inescapable, evil setting represents the inevitable loss of innocence as a consequence for abandoning his faith. Brown’s sin is unavoidable once he loses his innocence. Likewise, in “Good Country People,” Hulga also loses her innocence in a trapped setting. Despite her wooden leg, Hulga is able to climb “the ladder that led into the loft”

Most obviously, Goodman Brown’s wife Faith symbolizes Brown’s innocence and his faith in God. Once Brown leaves his wife, he laments that “there is no good on earth” (page). Symbolically, his own faith is gone. In fact when Brown arrives at the evil ceremony, Faith is there, thus demonstrating the frailty of Brown’s goodness. His innocence compromised, Brown realizes that the world is far more evil than he expected. Therefore Faith functions as a symbol to reveal Brown’s loss of innocence. Likewise, in “Good Country People,” Flannery O’Connor also uses physical symbols of corrupted faith to expose the evil of the world. Manley carries around a Bible that is “hollow and contain[s] a pocket flask of whiskey, a pack of cards, a small blue box” (13). The hollow bible symbolizes the hollowness of Manley’s religion: the Bible, like his faith, is a replica that has been stripped of its meaning. Symbols of apparent innocence such as Faith and the Bible lose their meaning when they are exposed to worldly evils. The fellow traveler in “Goodman Brown” and Manley Pointer in “Country People” represent devil figures which corrupt the symbols of innocence. Hawthorne’s devil has his own symbolic object, a serpent staff that he gives to Goodman Brown. More interesting however is his overall appearance. Although he embodies evil, the devil wears