Theme Of Gothic Symbolism In Young Goodman Brown

The real nature of humanity In the short story “Young Goodman Brown”, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Gothic symbolism to evoke a sense of disillusioned trust that Brown comes to experience, as he ventures further and further into the hellish forest. In the beginning of the story, the reader comes upon Brown as he is bidding his wife, who is ideally named ‘Faith’, goodbye as he is about to venture off into the deep, dark, and gloomy forest that is outside of his village in Salem. As Brown continues into the forest, the reader is introduced to a key element that is brought about in Gothic symbolism, the concept of evilness. Brown constantly expresses how ‘evil’ the forest is, “There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree!” (Hawthorne 640). Hawthorne also extends the use of the concept of ‘Evil’ when he describes that Brown “Felt himself justified in making more haste in his present evil purpose.” Thus, meaning that Brown is on a quest to seek out Evil for help. As the reader follows Brown into the forest, it isn’t long before Brown comes upon a man in the forest who was seated at the foot of an old tree, Hawthorne describes the man being “about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown,

There is nothing in this world that evil has not touched, and there is no way that anyone can avoid evil. Hawthorn makes this theme extremely relevant in this short story by going as far as using the religious exemplars as examples of evildoers. Hawthorn could have many different reasons for creating this story by using this theme in particular, but one must consider the era in which this story was written in as well as the setting in which the author was located when he wrote the story. One could consider that hawthorn wrote this story to symbolize that evil is predominate in everything, especially