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Symbols And Faith In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

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Symbols and Faith In “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the story is centered on the idea of religion, temptation, and the loss of faith. Young Goodman Brown is the main character in this story. Like his family before him, Young Goodman Brown is a devoted Christian that gets tempted into wrong doings that his religion does not support. Throughout the story, Young Goodman Brown makes decisions that ultimately lead to his relationship with his wife (faith) other characters, and his religion worsening. Because the story is narrated in limited third person omniscient, the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, uses symbols like places, objects, and characters to help the reader get more out of the story and understand the meaning behind the …show more content…

The main one Hawthorne writes about is Young Goodman Brown’s wife’s, faith. In the beginning, Brown talks about how pure and lovely his wife is and how much of a bad person he is for leaving her. Brown exclaims, “What a wretch am I, to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought, as she spoke, there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But, no, no! 'would kill her to think it. Well; she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night, I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven." Before he goes into the forest and sees what he’s not supposed to, he thinks of faith as the most wonderful thing ever, then his mood towards her changes when he sees her in a bad position. The story also talks about the travelers Young Goodman Brown Sees. He was surprised to see people he knew among them, some of them were the people who represented the town. The travelers symbolize that everyone can be good or evil, however, Brown thought of them as bad. Faith and the travelers seem to have good relationships with Young Goodman Brown at the beginning, but it shifts at the end of the story because Brown loses his faith. Young Goodman Brown becomes unsure and hateful towards the people in the village and his once beautiful

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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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