Young Goodman Brown Story’s Symbols or Our Own Life’s Symbol

Nathaniel Hawthorne uses symbols to create a religious ambiguity in his story Young Goodman Brown. It is necessary to mention that he obtained much of this style from his Puritan ancestry. In this story Goodman Brown doubts himself and reiterates his false confidence to himself. His struggle between the evil temptations, the devil, and the church abiding life is struggle he doesn’t know he can handle. He challenges his faith in himself and in the community in which he resides. He will to venture into the forest, refuse the temptations of the devil, and return to the village before the sunrise. This challenges and temptations Goodman had in this story can be a representations of all our challenges and temptations we encounter in our own lives.

Goodman Brown is a puritan, and he lives in Salem, which is a Puritan village that appears to be a good Christian community in the beginning of the story. Hawthorne criticizes this community who believes they are pure but the evil resides just as in the people they persecute.

A man was waiting for Goodman in the forest and then walks by Goodman’s side. It is not mentioned that this man is devil but “the clock of Old South was striking, as I came through Boston; and that is full fifteen minutes ago”, interpreting that has supernatural power to move faster than normal humans. He also has a staff in the shape of black snake, the symbol of darkness and evil. Goodman fallows the devil into the forest, without knowing what he would find but was very confident in that he can handle it. The first temptation Goodman had been when the devil offers his staff for him to use and Goodman rejects it. Goodman told devil that he and his family have been “a race of honest men and good Christian”, but the devil told Goodman that his family and whole community went through the forest with the devil as they tortured women in Salem or burned the villages of Indians to the ground, and afterwards the devil and his ancestors would go for a “pleasant walk”.

At the end, the devil has apparently infested all of the Puritan’s souls with sin at least to Goodman’s eyes. Whil

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