What Is The Symbolism In Young Goodman Brown

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In an individual’s life, evil and temptation throughout situations will eventually be tested causing confusion and devastation of one’s emotions. In the short story “Young Goodman Brown,” the main character, Goodman Brown, experiences this point in his life. The author uses particular objects and people to enhance the effect of this situation in Goodman Brown’s life. Throughout the story “Young Goodman Brown,” Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Faith and her pink ribbons, the forest and Salem Village, and the serpent’s staff to show symbolism in Goodman Brown’s human nature and moral decisions.
In the beginning of the story, Hawthorne uses Faith, Young Goodman’s wife, and the pink ribbons in her cap to show the innocence and purity that occurred in Goodman Brown’s life. Although Faith is an …show more content…

Salem Village is a holy place filled with Puritans that live Christian lifestyles; therefore, the village gives him hope to go back to a Christian filled lifestyle after his sinful actions in the forest. The forest can be inferred as the evil in his life by being compared to a physical location of his own living hell. Goodman Brown had never experienced Satanic or demonic characters, and the old man in the forest uses particular people in his life to cause confusion in the forest. The old man uses characters as a manipulation in thinking that even good people in his family have previously visited the forest. The evil that Goodman Brown experiences in the forest is symbolic to the representation of the forest, and the evil that occurs from his visit. From the good that comes from Salem Village and the evil that generates from the forest, the two opposing sides can be portrayed as a mental block that Goodman Brown continually faces in making decisions that affect his spiritual

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