By: Shawn Cox
Submitted: 2010-05-06 15:56:59 | Word Count: 508
Hawthorne who is the author of the short story "The Young Goodman Brown" presents several symbolisms in his piece of work. The symbols are generally about the conflicting bad and good sides of the human nature. “Young Goodman Brown” is an exciting short story about a Puritan early settler who lived in Salem during the time of witch trials. The settler attended the witch meetings which were held in the forest, these meetings later on changed his life for the worst. His story depicts so much about the childhood life Hawthorne had as he was being brought up in a Puritan society.
In the short story Hawthorne clearly brings out a number of symbols which looks so obvious that even a least attentive reader can easily recognize them. A though by reading the last few paragraph of the story one can start to realize use of deeper irony and meaning unlike the previous initial parts of the story.
In the first paragraph, Hawthorne uses a striking symbol, the symbol being the name of Young Goodman Brown who is the main character and a protagonist, the wife who is known as Faith Brown, is an antagonist in this selection. Young Goodman Brown was a husband who was said to be still immature and so he symbolizes goodness, immaturity, and everyman. He is seen to very religious, happily married, naive and trustworthy. “Young Goodman Brown is distrustful, sad, evil meditative and desperate” (Adams, 1972). He is naive because he finds himself into the forest despite being warned of the dangers associated with the forest. He is actually everyman and represents all the ages of men both old and young, this is depicted form the way the mother ghost was trying to protect him from going out of the forest just like our parents usually do in some ways to guide us against danger, we are always pushed on by our parents even though we are going to make mistakes and that is how Brown’s Father ghost did.
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an’s wife is also a symbol in the story. The wife is called Faith. Symbolism of the name Faith is depicted in the story when we see Goodman Brown leaving his lovely wife Faith, to go and spent his night in the forest woods. The name Faith plays a symbolic role here because it tends to represent Brown's religious conviction throughout the tale. Faith calls Brown to stay with her in vain as Brown is determined to go his own way, Faith has enough faith that Brown will stay and spent the night with her but it does not happen so. Faith is a woman who is filled with evil yet she is perceived to be Godly, because she always looked honest and Godly and that the young Goodman entrusted all his faith in her. This reasons made her to be viewed upon as a heroine of Brown’s worst enemies. Faith is seen to be a responsible, adorable pure and poisonous.
