Symbolism In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

When you hear someone’s name, do you often wonder if it fits their personality or not? In Nathanial Hawthorne short story “Young Goodman Brown”, each character’s name symbolizes their role in the story. Throughout the story, Hawthorne portrays every character in a special way. Each name that is used has a special meaning and symbolizes different characteristics of that character. The main character in the short story is Young Goodman Brown. The Young in his name represents the innocence, and how young and inexperienced Brown is. The name Goodman is a surname that is similar to Mr. in today’s society. To be named Goodman one has to be in suitable standing with the community. Browns faith gets tested when he goes into the woods to discover his friends and wife participating in witchcraft activities. Attempting to keep his faith, he begins to see more of his friends, and begins to question himself. When he returns to the village, he sees all his friends and wife acting normal, and realizes that he can not trust the people of Salem Village. The readers never find out if he was dreaming or what he saw was real.
Hawthorne used her name to symbolize the loss of faith in Goodman Brown at the end of the story. The color pink symbolizes the youthfulness that Faith portrays. At the beginning of the story Faith wears a pink ribbon that signifies her purity and innocence as a woman. Hawthorne mentions the pink ribbon multiple times throughout the beginning of the story to show Faiths happiness as a young lady. During Brown’s trip through the woods he sees Faith, and sees a pink ribbon float to the ground, which symbolizes that her faith is gone. At the end of the story, Faith is there to greet Brown like she said she would. When he sees her, he sees the pink ribbon in her hair, which symbolizes that her faith has returned. He becomes very confused because he cannot trust the community or trust