In the story of young Goodman brown the Author of the story, Nathaniel Hawthorne, uses symbolic characters that represent life. In the story, Young Goodman Brown goes into a journey into the cold, dark, and lonely forest. Faith, his wife is rejected by young Goodman brown when she asks him to stay with her that night and to forget about the journey. Young Goodman Brown tells her that she will be all right without him and that he has to go into that journey. This is an image of what many people do, if not all people. We do not listen to our sin or to people who only wants the best for us, for example, our family. In Young Goodman Brown, Faith does not only resemble Young Goodman Brown’s religion, but it also resembles his support and security …show more content…
This event had a great impact on Young Goodman Brown’s mind because the entity that Goody Cloyse symbolized was part of his faith of religion. Goody Cloyse was his catechism teacher who was his spiritual adviser when Young Goodman Brown was growing up. She wasn’t the only spiritual mentor of Young Goodman Brown, but as well as for many other children in the Salem village. Young Goodman Brown was confused that this important women in her early childhood had to do something with the devil resulting in the loss of his faith for a while. Human mentality is very easy to change whenever we suffer from a disappointment. For example, when young innocent minds are raised in an adoption family, their adoption parents sometimes never tell them the truth until they reach a certain age or until they find out. Telling them the truth always impacts them in a drastic way. The way they comprehend and react it all depends on their mentality and the experience and values they gain throughout their lives. Moreover, some people have a weaker mentality and decide to run away from home, not talk to their adoption parents anymore, or to be depressed for the rest of their lives. The moment we figure out something different from what we believed in some point of our lives has a great impact subsequently because our minds are found confused just as Goodman Brown’s mentality …show more content…
Young Goodman Brown automatically remembered her wife and instantly though it was hers. It could have been someone else’s pink ribbon but he thought it was faiths. He then started to lose his faith and loose his confidence and support and began to think thousands of things. Young Goodman Brown began to think that faith was being influence by the devil. He indicated by speaking to faith in his mind to resist from devil because if faith resisted then his faith will continue to survive. Our mentalities often interpret things wrong. Sometimes we believe something due to a bad interpretation which often times could be true but also not true. For example, when we see a car exactly the same as of someone we love and trust in a place we never expected, it automatically confuse our cognizance because we expect that person to tell us all the truth and to communicate us where they are and where they are going as well as with who. Our minds automatically think thousands of things that block us from reality in which there are always two versions to an event like this. One is the way we our brain imagine and the other is the way it actually happened. Humans are able to interpret something the way they want to or the way our immature minds generate us to think a certain way. For instance,
The use of symbolism in "young Goodman Brown" shows that evil is everywhere, which becomes evident in the conclusion of this short story. Hawthorne's works are filled with symbolic elements and allegorical elements. "Young Goodman Brown" deals mostly with conventional allegorical elements, such as Young Goodman Brown and Faith. In writing his short stories or novels he based their depiction of sin on the fact that he feels like his father and grandfather committed great sins. There are two main characters in this short story, Faith and Young Goodman Brown. "Young Goodman Brown is everyman seventeenth-century New England the title as usual giving the clue. He is the son of the Old Adam, and recently wedded to Faith. We must note that every word is significant in the opening sentence: "Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street of Sale, Village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young w2ife.
This was shocking for Young Goodman Brown because everyone from town who were claiming to be Christians were here worshipping the devil. The symbolic part of the story is that all people will sin and even Jesus has sinned. But in Goodman Brown anyone who has sinned cannot be trusted because they follow the devil. The devil is at the altar and a basin which is like a big bowl, but what was in it “Did it contain water, reddened be the lurid light? or was it blood?” (12). As the devil was going to mark them with the liquid from the basin. Goodman Brown yelled “Faith! Faith! Cried the husband, look up to heaven, and resist the wicked one”(12). Goodman Brown did not know if Faith had heard him. This conflict is when Goodman Brown finds out that everyone worshipped the devil and that he was the only one who had stayed true towards his religion. This is ironic because there is no one in the world who has not sinned, and for Goodman Brown to think that he is the one and only one to have not sinned is the reason it is
During Goodman Brown’s journey, he recognized Goody Cloyse, his catechism teacher, the preacher, and Deacon Gookin is going to the devil’s meeting. However, after seeing his church members at the devil’s meeting, Goodman says, “My Faith is gone! and There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come devil! for to thee is this world given” (Hawthorne 27). “But, where is Faith?”, asked Goodman Brown (Hawthorne 29). As hope came into his heart, he trembled when he found the pink ribbon of his wife, Faith, in the forest. At that moment, Goodman Brown lost his faith in his family and church members. Goodman becomes unforgiving of others and believes only evil can be created from evil and there is nothing that anyone can do to change it. Here, Hawthorne demonstrates that a naive faith in our family, friends, and church member’s righteousness could lead to distrust. While, “Young Goodman Brown” lives a long life with Faith, he never loses his meanness toward humanity and the evil in the world, “for his dying hour was gloom” (Hawthorne
In the story "Young Goodman Brown", Nathaniel Hawthorne uses a dream to illustrate a young man’s loss of innocence, understanding of religion and his community. Through this dream, the main character Young Goodman realizes that the people that he surrounds himself with are not who he believes them to be. The story of “Young Goodman Brown” focuses on the unconscious mind. The characters in this short-story are able to represent the struggle of Young Goodman’s superego, ego, and id. Representing the superego is Young Goodman’s wife Faith.
Faith can be defined, as a firm belief in something for which there is no proof. "Young Goodman Brown" is about a man who leaves his wife, Faith, at home alone for a night while he takes a walk down the road of temptation with the devil. Along the road he sees many people that he would never expect to see on this road, his wife included. He returns to his life in Salem a changed man. In "Young Goodman Brown" Nathaniel Hawthorne uses symbolism and characterization to imply that when individuals lose their faith in the goodness of mankind, they may begin to imagine that their peers have yielded to temptation.
Nathaniel Hawthorne uses different people as symbols throughout "Young Goodman Brown." The largest symbolic roles in the story are goodman Brown and his wife Faith. Both of the characters' names are symbolic and representative of their personalities. "'With Heaven above and Faith below, I will stand firm against the devil!' cried goodman Brown," is just one of many quotes that directly relates goodman Brown's personality with his name (189). Goodman Brown is truly a good man. Faith, goodman Brown's wife, also has a name that is indicative of her nature. The story directly supports this point in the phrase "Faith, as the wife was aptly named . . . " (184). Faith is persistent in trying to keep goodman Brown off the path of sin in the first part of the story: " . . . pr'y thee, put off your journey until sunrise, and sleep in your own bed to-night" (184). Hawthorne does an excellent job of turning the main characters into symbols that are prominent throughout the story.
In both The Scarlet Letter and Young Goodman Brown, were there symbols marked upon women. For Georgiana, it was her birthmark, the fairy-like hand placed upon her cheek. As for Hester, it was the scarlet letter “A” embroidered on her breast. In Hester’s beginning, she couldn’t bear the weight of glare of others, but for Georgiana, she never thought much about her mark. Soon Georgiana submitted to the views of her husband, and the birthmark was the “one defect” that grew “more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives.” (2) She was subservient to her husband’s will at playing god, who was so keen on removing such an “imperfection.” It became her downfall, and led to her ultimate death. Unlike Georgiana, Hester never let her scarlet letter consume her whole being. Her letter became a symbol of ability, something she wasn’t afraid to wear,
Nathaniel Hawthorne uses symbolic imagery throughout his story Young Goodman Brown to impact the theme of good people sometimes do bad things. Hawthorne takes us on a journey of truth and realization. Goodman Brown was not open to the truth or the reality that the world is filled with evil and people are imperfect. His perception of the world was it was a fun loving happy place and when he was exposed to reality he turned away from people and lost faith in them. His faith should have been in God because God will never let you down but his faith was in people and people are imperfect and subject to disappoint you.
First, we will start with Goodman Brown. He is the main character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story titled “Young Goodman Brown”. “Hawthorne could not escape the influence of Puritan society” (McCabe). I think that Hawthorne’s own past is and complications are reveled in his story about Goodman Brown. I believe that Goodman Brown has had a rough past and is trying to reach beyond his past in order to reach heaven. Goodman has some major problems with his wife, Faith, and everyone else in his community. I think that he is seeing everyone as perfect people, but he is having impure thoughts about himself and his past. In order to deal with these problems within himself, he is making up that everyone has this awful bad side. When he goes into the forest, he believes he is talking to the devil with looks much like his grandfather. The devil is feeding him bad thoughts about everyone he knows, even his own father and his wife Faith. Next, I believe that Goodman Brown has had a rough past and in order for him to overcome this within himself he must search for attention. This attention may not be needed from his wife or community members, I believe it is needed from him. He is feeling overwhelmed with obligations from his wife and peers that he has no time to decide whether this type of life is right for him. So, in search for the answer to his questions about life, he turns to the devil and takes his...
At the beginning of his journey, Goodman Brown’s will and pride were both embedded in the belief that he was a pious man. Goodman’s pride in piety evidently fails him, as he discovers that his faith was based on the principles of individuals who had sworn allegiance to the devil. This deplorable truth destroyed his conviction, and in this sense the devil prevailed against Goodman Brown.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s allegorical story “Young Goodman Brown” is set in Salem, Massachusetts during the late sixteen hundreds in a time of religious hysteria and only a few generations after the infamous witch trials. Although "Young Goodman Brown" is a fictional tale, it is based on the cynical environment of Salem during this time period. The short story is filled with many literary elements, leading you to question what did exactly happen to the main character at the conclusion. When analyzing a story like "Young Goodman Brown", one must recognize that the story is at whole symbolic. In the text, symbols are used to uncover the truth of the characters. The role of Faith as both a character and a spiritual element are crucial to both the story and the character of Young Goodman Brown.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown,” the author uses danger and mystery to represent the struggle of good versus evil. Young Goodman Brown journeys into the night and comes to realize an unforgiving truth. Everyone is in danger of abandoning their faith or is inherently evil. Nathaniel Hawthorne has filled this story symbolism, after reading this story the reader may have questions about Young Goodman Browns’ determination to journey towards his evil purpose. Nathaniel Hawthorne implies strong faith can endure but when that faith is destroyed, what view does a person have towards mankind? Let us take a look at Nathaniel Hawthorne’s use of significant symbols throughout “Young Goodman Brown.”
Unfortunately, Goodman Brown truly has lost his faith. Though his wife appears unchanged and wishes to welcome him with open, loving arms Brown rejects her. The reader is left slightly confused as to why, but perhaps Brown has given up hope that good can win over the enormous amount of sin or evil out there. He is unable to accept Faith now that he is forced to see her in her unclean or imperfect state. Brown can no longer see the good for the evil surrounding him, and has lost all hope. Although Brown tried to resist the devil, in the end he failed in his journey of exploring evil and returning to the side of good.
...Brown, like all humans, sees that everyone can be corrupt and immoral, that it is possible for people to make mistakes. This is extremely disappointing to brown and ruins him. Brown felt that he made the right decision and did not follow the devil, but everyone else around him did. Even his own wife follows the devil. She is supposed to represent holiness and faith, and she is just as corrupt as everyone else. This portrays how even the church, which is supposed to be holy, can be corrupt. The story symbolizes that everyone in society is flawed and no one is perfect. However this idea drives Goodman brown to become insane. He dwells on this fact and loses his ability to see the good in people as well as the bad. Brown couldn't realize that even if people are evil at times, they can still be good people. This is what caused brown to change so drastically.
This different mode of thought allowed him to create truth from fiction, turmoil from solidarity. By using ambiguous words he was able to create a real wife for Goodman Brown, while also creating a religious experience for Mr. Brown. The name alone is not really significant, but when coupled with the serious religious undertones of the text, it becomes crucial. Goodman Brown lost Faith. He lost his wife faith, the faith he held in his town, and at one point his faith in God's ability to protect those who choose to serve Him.