The Symbolic Meaning Of Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

There are hundreds, even thousands of literary theories. Looking at the Freudian theory, everything in the text of Young Goodman Brown has a symbolic meaning. The text is placed in the early mid-nineteenth century, in Salem. Young Goodman Brown is about to leave is wife, Faith, for a walk in “hell”. Salem is known as the town of witchcraft and horridness. In Moore’s review he writes, “"What is it the devil can offer him that his Faith cannot?" asks James C. Keill in his discussion of the story's gender constructions (34)”. He also states that, “the answer from a Freudian perspective is that Goodman Brown is in fact seeking himself his lost/unwanted parts, the psychic energies he keeps locked in the dungeon of the unconscious because they threaten to overwhelm his Calvinistic value system, which has no room for darkness, shadow, and "evil.".” Having such an evil within a soul can be the most dreadful

When Young Goodman Brown his shown his shadow, he goes against his “Faith” and follows the dark shadow into the forest.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote about many things that Freud had proved to be truth of symbolic theory later on. In Young Goodman Brown Hawthorne analyzes symbolic meaning just like Freud has. Hawthorne’s fiction, Young Goodman Brown, shows how sin can be depicted through just a simple dream.

Fannye Cherry even states, “in substance an account of a young man’s experiences with some New England witches, deals with the effects of secret sin in the human heart and with the dual nature of man..”. She agrees that sin lies in every soul and every heart. That the one person we look up to can symbolize something of great sin. Symbolize the Devil and a person of great dismay may not even realize it. Cherry writes that Hawthorne disguises the Devil as Young Goodman Brown’s