Literary Devices in Young Goodman Brown Essay

Young Goodman Brown

In the short story Young Goodman Brown, the author, Nathaniel Hawthorn used many literary techniques such as allusions, imagery, foreshadowing, and antithesis. But Young Goodman Brown is known for its evident symbolism throughout the story. Hawthorn recreates the world renowned of innocence, temptation, guilt, and sin. The story we all know not as Young Goodman Brown, but the story of Adam and Eve.

The author begins his prose with the symbol of the time of day; sunset which represents an ambiguous time of day and represents the end of something abstract. Why would someone begin their journey at the end of the day? Hawthorn also dashes in more irony and symbolism by having the setting of the prose in a Salem village, a village where the Salem Witch Trials set forth and on all hallows eve, a place and time where such sorrow and hatred are exhibited. Goodman Brown's wife, Faith, symbolizes Brown's spiritual faith and the pink ribbon she wears in her hair demonstrates her purity and innocence. Faith is also a symbol of Eve, curious and corrupted by evil because of that fact. Goodman Brown, indeed represents Adam, a man who appears to represent human beings confronted with temptation.

As he crosses the threshold, he enters a dark forest of sin, so to speak, to satisfy his curiosity about the happenings there and perhaps even to take part in them. The forest symbolizes confusion, cross roads, self discovery, and the Garden Of Eden. The man who meets Brown in the forest appears to represent the devil; his staff is a symbol of the devil as a serpent. Thus we regress back to the serpent that met Adam and Eve. It was, of course, a treethe Tree of Knowledgethat tempted Adam. Goodman Brown is tempted by the whole forest. Like Adam, he suffers a great fall from innocence and turns his back on faith literally and symbolically. As he and the devil walk side by side in the forest the devil ask asks why Brown is late, Brown retorts that "Faith kept me back awhile" Brown now makes an attempt to turn away from sin and return to Faith but is yet tempted by the devil again. Brown now leaves the path to run through the woods to escape sin. There Hawthorne shows that once one leaves the path of righteousness it is hard to find it again even if one wants to, for the forest of sin are all darkness and confusion.

The narrowness of the path can be seen as Brown being surrounded by evil. The winding path he must take symbolizes how far he must stray away from the innocence of his world to see the evil and the forest closing behind him advocates he may never return to his innocence. As Brown continued down his path something, "fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon" . The pink ribbon falling from the sky represents Brown's loss of faith. Brown cries, "My Faith is gone!" The pun on the name Faith suggests that Brown's wife Faith is gone, but also his faith. At the end of Young Goodman Brown, finds a catalog of pious and un pious people sinned and all of the world met in hell which changed him forever.