Young Goodman Brown

Sean Campbell

Professor Coombes

Freshman Comp 2.

Young Goodman Brown

     Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne contains a lot of great symbolism. The symbols take many forms from the setting to the characters. The symbols can be viewed as a part of the storyline, but when you put some thought into it they represent many different things. Young Goodman Browns loss of innocence symbolizes the loss of innocence for all human.

     Faith, Brown’s wife, is a symbol herself. When he says “My love and my Faith” he is using his wife as a symbol and is really referring to his love and faith to God. He goes on to say “this one night I must tarry away from thee.” He means that he must part ways from his faith in God to carry on with his journey. He says to the devil, “Faith kept me back awhile” which he is making reference to a higher being that is trying to keep him from making this journey by delaying it. When Brown finds the pink ribbon that his wife was wearing lying in the forest he says, “My Faith is gone” and is referring to himself as losing his faith in God. Also Brown’s “errand” symbolizes the Puritan voyage where they were to find the plan that God had set for them and let faith be their guide. As Goodman Brown continues his “errand” and things begin to play out he grown weak and falls to the ground. He “begins to doubt whether there really was Heaven above him” and this is a key point when Goodman Brown’s faith being to go away. Brown in panic declares that “with Heaven above, and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!” This is very similar to a Puritan putting his faith in God and following “God’s Plan”.

     The forest that Browns ventures into is a symbol itself, in Puritan days the townspeople were not allowed into the forest because that is where evil lurked and even says “my father never went into the woods, nor his father before him” Hawthorne described the forest as “a dreary road darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest” and even jokes of the evil lurking there when he says “there may be a devilish Indian behind every tree” and “what if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!”