Faith In Young Goodman Brown

In ‘Young Goodman Brown’, Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes many seemingly ordinary features in his story to reinforce a misanthropic take on human nature. One of the many ways he does such is through young Goodman Brown’s wife, Faith, and her pink ribbons. Faith is described as ‘aptly named’ in the story by Hawthorne. From the first sentence, Hawthorne gives the impression that Faith is the epitome of faith itself, and young Goodman Brown seems to think so too, as he references to her in statements where ‘Faith’ and ‘faith’ are interchangeable, such as “with heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil” (Hawthorne). Hawthorne leads his readers to believe that Faith is what keeps young Goodman Brown good and faithful, but as the story progresses, the readers see that that isn’t quite the case and the ideal set up is one that an ordinary human being cannot possibly live up to, and with all things good, the idea eventually falls, which is the point at which her pink ribbons become a bigger part of the picture.
… There is no good on Earth, and sin is but a name” (Hawthorne). Let it be clarified that, at this point, Goodman Brown has no actual proof that his wife has met an untimely demise, but has merely seen her ribbon in the woods. The fact that he reacts so dramatically to the sight of her pink ribbons shows that his faith didn’t lie in his wife at all, but at the picture of her with her pink ribbons, and once the two become separated, Brown’s ideal for his wife, his ‘Faith’ then falls to the ground—just as her ribbon did. This, however is not the only impactful symbol used by Hawthorne to expose the nature of mankind in ‘Young Goodman