When Protestants Enter the Woods in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

Shirley Jackson and Nathaniel Hawthorne were two American authors who were born over a century apart and shared the same love of literary works but in a sick and twisted kind of way. They were authors who simply wrote with passion about beliefs, sin, and the natural temptations of evil in all humans. The story of “Young Goodman Brown”, takes places at the end of the 17th century, around the time of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, in New England in colonial Massachusetts, Hawthorne’s keen interest which is sin-and-brimstone a Puritans past.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” these literary devices are used to bring emphasis to Brown’s struggle with his moral and spiritual beliefs. Goodman Brown is challenged with an important decision to keep his faith or follow the temptation of evil. Allegory and symbolism of the pink ribbons, Faith, the staff, and the woods are used by Hawthorne to create an allusion that the town’s people could not be corrupted by evil.

In “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne’s uses imagery to gets the reader attention. In the parable of “Young Goodman Brown,” the reader is set into a twist of good versus evil. Hawthorne depict evil in terms that describe the forest and the old man with the staff. The reader believe Goodman Brown is walking into evil when the woods was mention. Puritans believe woods to be the territory of the devil. In “young Goodman Brown” the forest is a symbol of the devil's home. “He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveler knows not who may be

Goodman Brown’s journey into the woods introduces us into his own religious hypocrisy. His character is described as young and possibly naïve to the true nature of the world, and Goodman Brown considers himself descended from”… a race of honest men and good Christians” (343). However, for unknown reasons, perhaps just out of curiosity, he decides to venture into the woods on a quest of “evil purpose.” Faith, Goodman Brown’s wife, is an important source of symbolism throughout his journey. She is not only his wife, but she is also symbolic of his spiritual faith. Before setting off into the woods Faith begs him not to go and foreshadows that nothing good will come of his trip. Hawthorne uses this scene to emphasize that questioning and straying from his “Faith” for even a night shows that his spiritual faith is much less established than he displays to his wife or the public. It also symbolizes that Goodman Brown had doubted and compromised his faith before he even began his voyage into the woods.

In the short story “Young Goodman Brown,” the author Nathaniel Hawthorne shows the fragility of humans when it comes to their morality. Goodman Brown goes on a journey through the forest with the devil to watch the witches’ ritual and observes the evil in the Puritan society. He loses his faith as he sees the people he respects the most participating in the sinful ritual. Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes setting, and symbolism in his short story “Young Goodman Brown,” to show how a person’s perspective can change by showing the hypocritical nature of the Puritan society

Though Nathaniel Hawthorne is an author of many great works, his short story “Young Goodman Brown” still stays relevant because it has themes and subjects that are relatable in today 's world. In the story “Young Goodman Brown,” Goodman Brown leaves his wife Faith, to go into the woods near Salem to have a meeting with the devil. Appearance vs. reality is shown in “Young Goodman Brown” through the plot, the character of Goody Cloyse, and the symbol of the maple staff.

Hawthorne quickly moves the setting from the village to Goodman Brown journeying away, alone, down a road leading to the forest. Historically, the forest symbolizes the heathen natural law. Since it is already late, shadows dominate the landscape, making trees and bushes seem more ominous than perhaps they really are. The road is described as, “darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind” (2259). As a lonely, dark, gloomy road entering into nature, Hawthorne foreshadows what will occur within the forest. There are distinct implications in having the protagonist journey into nature rather than seeking something from society. Traditionally, the hero journey’s toward knowledge and understanding; therefore, Young Goodman Brown becomes an anti-hero. In seeking nature and heathen law, he gains nothing, and

“Young Goodman Brown,” written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1835, is a short story about a man named young Goodman Brown who leaves his wife, Faith, to go on an errand into the woods with the devil. Faith begs Goodman Brown to not leave her alone, but he chooses to go anyways. This short story shows many signs of symbolism, such as the forest, the devil, the staff, the pink ribbons, Faith, sin, and guilt. These symbols help in understanding the story of young Goodman Brown and his unconscious struggle with his religion. The trip not only takes Brown onto a journey of sadness, but also into the deepest parts of his soul. Goodman Brown wishes to enter the dark forest of sin, to satisfy his

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” is an excellent example of the use of allegories and symbolism as a form of satire on Puritan faith. According to Frank Preston Stearns, author of The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Hawthorne may have intended this story as an exposure of the inconsistency, and consequent hypocrisy, of Puritanism” (Stearns 181). Throughout the story of “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne tries to infuse as many symbols and allegories as he can to enhance the overall meaning of his story. He uses the village, Goodman Brown, Faith, the man in the forest, and the time spent in the forest as either a symbol or an allegory to get his point across that Puritans are not always what they seem to be.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s allegory is “Young Goodman Brown.” The setting takes place in the town of Salem, Massachusetts, during the mid-1600s. The protagonist, Young Goodman Brown, ventures into a dark, brooding forest down a path of uncertaincy and fear. In “Young Goodman Brown,” Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the symbols of black, the serpent’s staff, and the old traveler to convey his theme about evil.

In the short story “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, there is a certain uncertainty, deviousness, and a riddle of wrongdoing living within the citizens of Salem. Young Goodman Brown, a very naive person, is ruined when he realizes the hypocrisy of his religion as he witnesses the truth in the middle of Salem woods. His own people worshipping a being that is not God! Ironically, when Brown confronts his fellow townspeople, he is angered by their responses; they seem to have no recollection of what occurred in the woods. Thus leaving him in a state of insanity, where all Brown senses around him are lies. The natural impulse to keep secrets and lies can harm others. This is embodied in Young Goodman Brown, who goes from a typical puritan to an unkind, judgmental, depressed man.

The primary setting of “Young Goodman Brown” is the forest. The Puritans believed that the woods were evil

Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of “Young Goodman Brown,” was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. Hawthorne, born into a Puritan family who was struggling financially, had never met his father. He had died when Hawthorne was but a boy of four years old. This, along with embarrassments brought upon by other ancestors, seemed to affect his writing and perhaps even inspired parts of “Young Goodman Brown.” Hawthorne had one ancestor, a Puritan judge, who persecuted Quakers, and another, who had taken part in the Salem Witch Hysteria (Meyer 322). Both of these were mentioned, or hinted upon, in the story of “Young Goodman Brown.”

Thus when Goodman Brown leaves his "faith", it is not a departure from virtue, but a departure from deception.  To continue the allegorical analysis, Goodman Brown represents any naturally good human being caught in puritanism's web.  His journey through the evil forest is a journey into truth - into Hawthorne's reality of evil puritanism. He discovers that all the "pious" members of the community are actually evil, which, when interpreted directly, tends to suggest the true nature of puritanism.  And when these same upstanding puritans mingle with those of  "dissolute lives" and "spotted fame(384)," Hawthorne is suggesting that Puritans are on the same level as these individuals in that there actions are no less morally repugnant.  Brown's conversation with Satan suggests that Puritans have always unconsciously committed sin in their

Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne provides historical, societal, religious, scientific and biographical contexts. The story is set in the period of the Salem Witch Trials in Puritan New England. The story describes Brown's journey into the depths of the forest, where he believes that he sees many of the members of his community, including his wife Faith, attending a satanic ceremony. The narrator implies that Brown may be sleeping, but either way the experience was real. It affected Brown very much. The story is often read as Hawthorne's condemnation of Puritan ideology, as it proposes that Puritan doctrine could strain so much doubt that believers were doomed to see evil-whether or not it truly existed-in themselves and