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Symbolism And Allegory In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

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Nathaniel Hawthorne is an American author that is known for his specific style of writing and his detailed stories about his personal life and those around him through his perspective. Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is a short story takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, a rather religious town -which is also where Hawthorne is from-. The story concentrates on Young Goodman Brown and his journey throughout the forest as well as the discoveries he makes. Hawthorne’s stories uses his diction, symbolism, and allegories within his pieces to convey his message, everything isn’t always what it seems. A “Young Goodman Brown” begins by introducing a newly wed couple, Goodman Brown, and his wife, Faith, as he’s kissing her goodbye before he heads …show more content…

Later as Brown begins his return home, horsemen appear in the forest. These horsemen happen to be the minister and Deacon Gookin, discussing some Indians who know a lot about devilry and a young woman who will be inducted, which the author implies is Faith. After managing to escape, he comes across a group of townspeople, Indian priests, and criminals, alongside a veiled woman. The woman promises to reveal all the town 's dark secrets of seductions and murders. Goodman Brown proceeds to the gathering only to reveal that this woman is Faith and he attempts to persuade her to resist. The story soon ends with Brown waking up the next morning in bed next to Faith, as if the past events of that night had never occurred. Hawthorne’s overall message throughout this short story is that everyone possess some kind of evil, even those who represent good. Not everyone wears their true colors on their sleeves. He also portrays the message that more specifically the people of Salem all speak the word of God yet their actions are rather devilish and evil. Young Goodman Brown is meant to represent Nathaniel Hawthorne’s true feelings and opinions of those around him, that everyone has their dark secrets and no one is truly

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Nathaniel Hawthorne leaves it to our own opinion to believe if Goodman Brown was dreaming or awake. In the beginning of the story it’s believed they saw Goodman Brown was awake before going into the forest. Then when he going into the forest, Goodman Brown had fallen asleep. So, the story has us believe that his worst fears came to reality. In the end it leaves us to question in what we thought from the beginning.

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Web. 2 May. 2012. The research of “Young Goodman Brown,” explains the various images found in Young Goodman Brown. Some of them clarifies the author criticisms are the Salem Village, the pink ribbons on Faith’s hat, the fellow traveler, the staff, and using of the term “faith”, and the forest.

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Passage #1 This quote shows a turning point in the story. The devil has been using methods of persuasion to make Young Goodman Brown feel isolated. Once he sees his catechism teacher, Goody Cloyse, he begins to feel isolated in the world which the devil has entrapped him in. In addition, he feels frightened because the devil has had influence on him indirectly through Goody Cloyse.

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(pg. 453)” Young Goodman Brown is a man living in the puritan era who has a wife and family, and is deep in his Christian faith. Young Goodman Brown lived in a town that is all connected to through the local church. Early in the story Young Goodman brown would set out to meet a person who would later be labeled as the devil by one of the locals. Young Goodman brown would have a vision of everyone in his community that would show him their wicked sins.

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Gisselle Moreno AP Lit Period 2 9/22/14 Pandora’s Box Imagine the disillusionment of a child who discovers that the Tooth Fairy is really a parent, and now suspects that mom and dad may be hiding even more information. Often as we age, we begin to question the religious beliefs and political worldviews of our families and societies. Most of us live through these kinds of experiences regularly, and even if they're painful, we figure out how to move on. However, this is not the case for Young Goodman Brown, the title character in an 1835 short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This short story that's rich in meaning came about through the historical context of the author’s grandfather, a Puritan, who served as a judge for the Salem Witch Trials.

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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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During his journey of sin, Young Goodman Brown and the devil come upon Goody Cloyse, Young Goodman Brown's catechism teacher, and, still believing that she is a “pious and exemplary dame” Goodman Brown tries to stay away from the woman by pleading with the devil “I shall take a cut through the woods… being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with” (3). Because of Young Goodman Brown’s beliefs of her innocence, it is even more jolting to him when she “knows her old friend,” the devil, and speaks about stolen broomsticks, recipes including “the juice of smallage and cinquefoil and wolf’s-bane,” and even the same devilish meeting that Young Goodman Brown and his accomplice are to attend (3). With signs that all point to sin and witchcraft, Young Goodman Brown’s shock in saying “That old woman taught me my catechism” had “a world of meaning” as he cannot possibly believe that a woman known to be so holy and righteous in the community could be so evil within. As Goodman Brown moves past the shock of Goody Cloyse’s actions, he is exposed to the sins of the holiest members of their Puritan community, the minister and Deacon Gookin. While Goodman Brown shamefully “[conceals] himself within the verge of the forest… he recognized the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin” who speak of the same evil “meeting” as Goody Cloyse and even remark that “several of the Indian powwows” will even be present (4,5).

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“Young Goodman Brown” is a fictional story that carries a great deal of realistic and spiritual meaning. The story was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1835 and it has since been read, as well as studied, by a multitude of scholars. In the process of evaluating a text, most critics take time to study individual characters. Carl Jung completely transformed how characters are viewed; Jung claimed that all writers form stories with characters that fall into universal archetypes. The archetype that receives the most attention is the hero, which is the main character of the story.

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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.

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“Through experiences with aural and observational witness, Brown changes his beliefs over the course of the story, and his hesitancy throughout the evening is evidence that what he heard and saw effectuated a spiritual uncertainty within Brown that resulted in his eventual affliction with lifelong doubt.” (Crawford) This quote directly demonstrates how much this one night in the forest affecting Young Goodman Brown’s life. The quote also directly shows how far too extreme mistakes born of human nature affect the minds of fully-devoted Puritans like Young Goodman

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Throughout human history, evil, innocence, and temptation have been a part of human existence that dates back before anyone can remember. Every piece of literature ever written revolves around these three themes. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses this in his story “Young Goodman Brown” to prove these points and show true human nature. There is evil everywhere in human nature. Hawthorne uses symbolism to convey that everyone possesses both good and evil and puts on a facade, proving that humans often lose their innocence when faced with evil and temptation.

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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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When Brown sees well respected and well known people of the town of Salem heading to the occult, he is at complete loss of faith and tries to soak in all of the shock he is receiving. When he arrives at the occult, there is a large crowd gathered around a fire while chanting a satanic ritual. A veiled woman is led to the fire and placed next to Brown. He notices it is his wife, Faith,

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566 Words | 3 Pages

Brown reflect this when returning home from the forest and see Faith in which his reaction was “ But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without greeting” (70). He displays this further by “Often, awaking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith, and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled, and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away.” (72) because his wife caused him to his loss of faith which he displays by not praying publicly or privately showing faith in

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The story of Young Goodman Brown is the story of a tale about the main character becoming aware of the hypocrisy of his faith as a Puritan. Through his travels in the woods at night, he unveils the truths, or what he believes as truths, about his wife Faith, neighbors, and fellow Christians. By the end, Brown loses all trust in his Faith, both literally and spiritually, and refuses to see any good in the world. The beginning scene where Goodman Brown meets the old man has the most significance in the story’s resolution. This is where his mistrust starts to form and where he experiences his first temptations to sin.

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