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The fall of man
- “Young Goodman Brown” functions as an allegory of the fall of man, from which Hawthorne draws to illustrate what he sees as the inherent fallibility and hypocrisy in American religion.
www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/young-goodman-brown/allegory/
‘Young Goodman Brown’ is an 1835 short story by the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Inspired in part by the Salem witch craze of 1692, the story contains a number of powerful symbols. But how should we analyse the symbolism of the story?
- A Summary and Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Young ...
‘Young Goodman Brown’, then, is a highly symbolic and...
- A Summary and Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Young ...
Brown symbolizes immaturity, goodness, and everyman. He is a very religious person, happy in his marriage, trustworthy and nave. Young Goodman Brown is stern, sad, darkly meditative, distrustful if not a desperate man (Adams 72).
Hawthorne mentions Faith’s pink ribbons several times at the beginning of the story, imbuing her character with youthfulness and happiness. He reintroduces the ribbons when Goodman Brown is in the forest, struggling with his doubts about the goodness of the people he knows.
Hawthorne sets up his allegory by first introducing the reader to Goodman Brown and his wife, Faith, both of whom function as representations of a universal concept. Goodman Brown symbolizes a “good man,” or a man whose moral goodness is a key part of his character, and Faith is the personification of a spiritual connection to God.
‘Young Goodman Brown’, then, is a highly symbolic and suggestive story about the nature of evil and also the nature of puritanism: once the veil has been lifted, Young Goodman Brown sees evil everywhere, even where it may well not actually exist.
Symbolism in Young Goodman Brown. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses symbolism to create a parallel situation of more in-depth and indirect references. Besides establishing depth resulting from indirectness, symbols enrich Brown’s experience by deepening the conflict in his mind.
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In “Young Goodman Brown,” Nathaniel Hawthorne employs the use of doubt and ambiguity to create a sense of unease in the reader. The protagonist, Goodman Brown, is plagued by doubts about the true nature of the people around him, including his own wife.
