Young Goodman Brown Literary Analysis

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown is a short story taking place during the salem witch trials about the titular character and his unknown errand that brought him into the forest. This is where he meets a traveler that brings him further in, and tempts him to go to a witch gathering. He goes after he sees a sign of his wife being nearby. After he almost gets marked, he leaves and passes out, then comes back to town in a new state of mind that affects him for the rest of his life. The allegory (from the Greek allegoria, literally speaking otherwise) is a common tool on the belt of a writer, but what is it? Well, it is the use of metaphor to create a layer/layers of meaning that’s beyond the literal level of interpretation. One of the ways Hawthorne’s story demonstrates this tool is through the multifaceted representation of faith. These manifestations are the wife of the protagonist , the Puritan beliefs that he and his community supposedly believe in, and Goodman’s hope in the world as a whole.
Despite how her name is Faith, she doubts and fears about how his errand will go due to “dreams and… thoughts that [cause her to feel] afeared for herself sometimes.” (24) This is why even after he leaves she is still “peeping after him with a melancholy air.” (24) Interesting to note how before he leaves she leaves a red herring on what’s to come later by saying “…and may you find all well when you come back.“(24) When he does come back he ignores her, which is symbolic of how the night before shook off all forms of faith. The moment this happened was when he cried out that “[His] faith is gone!” (30) He wasn’t talking about just his wife, as he goes on to say that “There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name.“