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Setting And Symbolism In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

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Infamous Salem
Nearly two hundred people were persecuted and accused as witches, and about twenty of them were executed during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The short story “Young Goodman Brown” presents the decision of a pious, Christian local citizen who takes a journey through the forest of Salem in order to find the real face and the truth about the people who he really cares. Nathaniel Hawthorne's subtle usage of setting, theme, and symbolism allows his audience to have a closer look at the hypocrisy of the prominent citizens of his hometown-Salem. The story is set in Salem, a religiously restrictive town in the state of Massachusetts, and it takes place during the end of the 17th century, around the time of infamous Salem Witch Trials. The setting itself plays a crucial role in reader’s creation of expectations of what may occur in the story. Salem hosted one of the notorious events in the American history called Witch Trials, at the core of which some sort of hypocrisy of the prominent citizens and other people of the town was evident. Therefore, to assume that Salem was infected with “mania of persecution” and its good, pious people were conjured by evil, wouldn’t be …show more content…

So it doesn't matter how good-hearted or good-willed the people are, they always have a hidden wickedness inside them which is going to be revealed at some point in their lives. “Young Goodman Brown”, the protagonist of the story, decided to take a journey through the forest of Salem to put his faith and Christianity to test upon encountering with the devil, but what he didn’t know was that he already faced the devil inside himself. This devil was his own temptation to meet evil within the forest that led him to lose his faith and religion because of witnessing the communion of the most pious and good citizens of Salem including his wife, with the

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