Young Goodman Brown - Short Analysis

Young Goodman Brown

By Nathaniel Hawthorne

(1804-1864)

This story (young Goodman Brown) is a meaningful symbol and it is written in old English. The background is in 1804-1864 or in seventeenth or eighteenth century. On that years reflected the puritan era, protestant in England. I as the reader confess that those sentences above have related to the whole story. In short, the Nathaniel Hawthorne's background is about religion.

In this story I will give the some examples about the symbols that appeared in this story. Firstly, young Goodman Brown is symbol of human that has weakness faith, weakness belief in God. The name of his wife is Faith. So, as the reader I ask to my self, why is the author named the young Goodman Brown's wife "Faith"? It will give us clue, that his wife symbolizes his belief, his faith in God. In this story Hawthorne told that young Goodman Brown three months married. Thus, I connected this statement with the Faith as belief in God, and three months married symbolizes the time that young Goodman Brown as a religious man, has newly belief (faith) in God. Three months means how weakness his belief is.

The story was begun the young Goodman Brown decided to take the journey. And his wife faith did not allow him, she suggested him to stay with her, and pray. But her husband still wants to take his journey on the forest. Hawthorne depicted the forest, darkness, gloomy, and a dreary road. It means that the young Goodman Brown has had a wrong decision. Forest symbolizes the sin. He has betrayed his faith to leave it and to commit a sin.

In the forest young Goodman brown brook out in weird occurrence until he met the dark figure. The dark figure symbolizes the devil. In that case, I know that the young Goodman Brown has in the devil side, as a human that full of sin. His decision makes him regret to his self, because he has left the wife, his faith, his belief in God. His decision brought in a wrong way, in a gloomy situation, and he can not return to his wife anymore, and he died in gloomy.

The messages in this story are, we as the human have rights to make decision in her/his life, to go to heaven or hell. Any one can not affect us to choose our faith. The person that has a main role to change our life, especially in religion is us. The young Goodman Brown represents a hypocrite man, that has a brave to betray his faith, his believe in god. As the human being we have to keep and cherish our belief in God, our faith in order to we will not regret in a future, especially when we died. If there is a heaven, why he chose hell? Sin is humanly, but betrayed our belief in God is never forgiven.