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Young Goodman Brown: Faith -- the Wife
In the Young Goodman Brown, the two important characters are the protagonist, Brown and his wife Faith. While Faith, the wife, has a small role to play yet her significance increases as we closely study her symbolic use in the story. The story revolves around a man's journey into the heart of darkness to discover the strength of his own faith. He considers himself a moral being but on this one occasion, he realizes that faith is but a weak power which can easily be suppressed by evil forces. Faith acts as a force that continuously tries to stop Brown from committing sin. The author aptly named his wife Faith because throughout the story, she acts as the force that stands opposed to evil. And references to Faith also depict the various stages and forms of Brown's faith at different points in the story.
Faith is a pretty young woman who recently got married to Brown. She is an innocent person and pink ribbons are symbolically used to depict her beauty and purity. "And
Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the soft ribbons of her cap" (610). Faith wants Brown to postpone his journey so the two can enjoy each other's company. At this point in their relationship, the power of Faith should be the strongest since they are newlyweds. It is that power which delays his...
When questioned by his evil companion, Brown confesses: "Faith kept me back a while." Though he is referring to his wife Faith, the young woman has been used to represent the positive force of faith commonly known as conscience and goodness. As the night progresses and Goodman Brown moves deeper into the forest which represents evil, he promises himself that "after this night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven" (611).
We can see Faith the wife has repeatedly been used as a symbol to represent goodness. Pink ribbons are also repeatedly mentioned in the story. They represent both Faith the wife and faith, the goodness within. Pink is the color of innocence and when they fall, it means Brown's faith is gradually dissipating. At one point he looks up at the sky and feels that he still has his faith intact: "The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward" (615). The mass of black cloud represent evil which had momentarily taken over faith. It was when "dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent sky above...and something fluttered lightly down through the air...and beheld a pink ribbon" did he understand his faith was quickly being overpowered. As he draws closer to evil, he can feel the lore of sin calling on to him: "[he] stepped out of the shadow of the trees and…
REFERENCES
1) Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Young Goodman Brown. Discovering Literature: Stories, Poems, Plays. 2nd ed. Eds. Hans P. Guth and Gabriele L. Rico. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 1997.
Young Goodman Brown In the story "Young Goodman Brown," much of the story is centered on Goodman Brown and his struggle to use his faith to suppress his evil impulses and his internal doubts. This struggle is undoubtedly a representation of some of the same struggles that Nathaniel Hawthorne must have faced within his own life in which he embraced the Puritan way of life and its beliefs. Given Hawthorne's background
Therefore in the remarkably persistent debate over whether Young Goodman Brown lost faith in human redemption or not, which critics have apparently quarreled over for a century and a half now, this reading takes the side that Brown did in fact retain some core belief that human redemption was possible, or else he would not have been alienated, tried to save the girl or had a family. The resulting message
As soon as that objective was achieved the whole theatrics was withdrawn. On the contrary it could well be nothing but his subconscious that expressed his own desire to see the world according to that perspective in which all the nice people embracing high standards of morality are all but faux. But it could be safe to assume that the whole episode in the forest was the figment of
) Doubts enter Brown's mind on page 15, as he looks "up at the sky" (which of course is pitch black in the deep forest at night) and doubts whether there is a heaven. But he cries out that he will "stand firm" - so readers know he still hopes to be strong and resist what is happening to him. But this night is not about resistance: "The cry of grief,
Goodman's internal conflict was brought about by his realization that he was vulnerable and can easily succumb to the temptations of the devil. Being in the wilderness did not help Goodman prevent this conflict from happening within him, since the wilderness was obviously not a part of society but of nature, therefore, the wilderness only follows the laws of nature and not the laws of humanity. The wilderness acted as
Young Goodman Brown - Ambiguities While in actuality, this short story is an accurate historical reference to Hawthorne's Puritan ancestry and his great grandfathers' participation in the Salem witch trials, through the character of Brown, Hawthorne reveals his own journey of discovery, and its troubling impact upon him. Hawthorne uses the theme of darkness to cast light upon the even darker truth, and shows how the impact of discovering the truth