Significance of a Symbol

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Significance of a Symbol

Everyday people read stories or different kinds of books. In all of these stories there are many different symbols. These symbols represent something significant in the story. By reading these stories only once the person reading it may or may not realize these symbols. The significance of these symbols has a big effect on the story and what the story is about. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” there are many different significant symbols that could be analyzed. Readers not knowing when first reading the story that there is even a symbol in the title of this short story. This shows that unless you read the story more than once then you will be unable to find the symbols.

In the beginning of the story we find out that Brown’s wife’s name is Faith. In the town they all live in everyone is a Puritan. Now being that his wife’s name is Faith, we right away put her name with a religious sense. Figuring that her name is Faith, that she is a good person and is very religious. As the story goes on Brown finds that even his wife has been friendly with the devil himself. Brown sees another side of his whole community that makes him in a way lose his “Faith”. So with this symbol you have to be careful because of how the tables can be turned very easily. You may think that something can mean one thing, but in the end it means something totally different. The name Faith meant something in the beginning, but at the end it meant something that you would have never expected. We all got the impression that Faith was such a good woman. Maybe she was. She did warn Brown not to go into the forest that night, and to stay with her. But being that he felt he needed to go, he found out the truth the hard way.

While Goodman Brown is in the forest he meets up with someone. He meets the devil himself. In the story this man is carrying a staff. In the story Hawthorne compares this mans staff to a serpents tail. Basically what he is trying to do is tell the reader that this man could be the devil.

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