Young Goodman Brown Story's Symbols or Our Own Life's Symbols? .
Nathaniel Hawthorne uses significant symbols in his story Young Goodman Brown, and mixed them with his Puritan ancestry to leaves us a message about a lost in faith, and about sin in our lives. These symbols are viewed in a continue struggle between the evil temptations, the devil, and the church abiding life in Young Goodman heart and mind. Is there is the same struggle he had, the same that we encounter everyday? However the symbols used by Nathaniel Hawthorne have a complex and meaningful importance to our lives. In the story the more significant symbols are those of the names, the people he found in the forest, the forest, and the things that some of the character had.
One of the symbols is the names. The name Young Goodman Brown infers that he is a good man that naive and that has something inside him that is not fine. He need to go to forest to prove himself his faith. Goodman 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 that believes they are pure but the evil resides just as in the people they persecute. At the beginning Goodman leaves his house at sunset while his wife, Faith, is trying to persuade him to depart at sunrise. This journey is the journey we face in a precise moment of our live where we have to confront all what we believe. Faith symbolizes Goodman's real faith in God, and he leaves his faith behind him and set forth into his journey with his own strength and power. He felt guilty leaving his Faith back home in their early stage of marriage, and he justifies it swearing that after that night he will "cling to her skirt and follow her to heaven". But this guilt he felt is the fear of his real faith he has, and hides it with the promise of return.
Faith has her "pink ribbons" that represent the sincere, pure, and innocent Goodman's faith.