Symbolism and Implied Meaning in Nathaniel Hawethorne's "Young Goodman Brown"

Josh Proctor
English 1102
Dr. Perry
April 28th, 2011
Symbolism and Implied Meaning in Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”
     When applied to fiction, the term “allegory” typically means that not only will symbolism be present throughout the work, but the symbolism will generally work together to represent something much grander and more intricate than the happenings of the story itself. This is definitely the case in “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The story itself is simple and straightforward: a man goes on a late-night journey into the forest, where he is tempted by the devil to lose his faith in God. Not only is the storyline simplistic, it also appears unattractive to the common reader at face value. The ending is depressing and gives us little hope or message, and therefore without the added symbolism, most would find “Young Goodman Brown” to be an unappealing read. However, Hawthorne understands his readers well, and utilizes clever, albeit sometimes vague symbolism throughout the story to play on the readers’ preconceptions about the world and its people. The discrepancy created between what readers expect the symbols and characters to mean and what they actual come to represent creates the tension and twists that makes this classic able to withstand the tests of time.
     It is often the case that the author’s choice of names for the characters in a story is the most intentional and symbolic decision they make. This definitely seems to be the case in “Young Goodman Brown.” From the title, we know the name of the main character, and this name seems to be just as symbolic as the name of Goodman Brown’s wife, Faith. However, although these names seem easy to analyze and overlook as amateur symbolism, perhaps Hawthorne had more in mind here, and it might be our expectations about what the name means that add to the suspense of the story. Taking the name at face value, “young” refers to our main character’s age, “Goodman” refers to his nature as a “good man,” and “Brown” merely serves to identify him by his last name, or family name. However, why must he be young? Moreover, why make his last name “Brown” and not “Smith”, or “Johnson”? Both were common names for a Puritan man in the town of Salem, Massachusetts, where the story is set. Stanford and Marilyn Apseloff raise a good point in their assessment of Goodman Brown’s name, in which they point out Hawthorne’s interest in Scottish history. The term Goodman had been used by the Scottish to refer to the devil, and a portion of a farmer’s crop was set aside for sacrifice to this “Goodman” (Apseloff 103). The authors also discuss the duality of the name: “While Goodman is another name for Satan, it is also a general identification for men in the general setting, colonial America.” (Apseloff 103) This further suggests not only that Young Goodman Brown’s name represents that he is partly good and evil all at once, but also that evil is part of everybody, as shown by the ambiguity of the honorific, “Goodman.”
     In the story, the wife’s name is Faith, which is, as symbols come, about as obvious as can be. However, this is another example of ambiguous symbolism that helps to enrich the story. When the devilish figure remarks on Brown’s late appearance, Brown responds, “Faith kept me back a while.” (Hawthorne 4). One can take this statement literally, as Brown’s wife prolonged the goodbye by pleading with him to stay; one may also take it figuratively: Brown’s Christian faith had kept him from taking the dark journey before him in the past. Hawthorne uses the same technique later on: upon seeing a pink ribbon like the one worn by his wife float down from the dark forest night, Brown exclaims, “My Faith is gone!” (Hawthorne 9). Although the capitalization of “Faith” might very well suggest that it refers to his wife’s name, the same punctuation may be used to imply divinity, and the scene signals the change in the Goodman: before this he has remained strong to his faith, but afterwards he accepts the evil within himself and inside the forest and turns to a madman. Thus, the statement, “My Faith is gone!” utilizes the ambiguity brought about by naming the main character’s wife “Faith,” and allows two messages to be taken simultaneously from the same line.
     The forest is another symbol that seems to pop out at the reader as obvious, but for every reader who takes the simplest message from literature, there is one who attempts to look deeper into the meaning of each symbol. The forest represents evil, yes, and the Puritan setting reinforces this very well. Zhu Xian-Chun sums this point up very well: “In the Puritan mind, the forest is ruled by the Devil” (Xian-Chun 59). However, exactly what type of evil nature does the forest have? Or rather, what makes the forest frightening and therefore deserving of Puritan superstition? Although lack of vision no doubt caused understandable fear for late-night travelers, the real fear is of the unknown. Brown also describes the forest as being “narrow”, “lonely”, and “closed immediately behind him” (Hawthorne 3). These descriptions sound appropriate for the setting, but they can also be used to describe something else: the pursuit of knowledge. The path to greater understanding through knowledge is at times narrow, often lonely, and as most who become avid learners discover, traps those who begin walking it inside. Once knowledge is obtained, there is escaping its hold, and the only logical course is to adjust one’s way of thinking to encompass this new knowledge. For many, including Goodman Brown, the knowledge of man’s apparent evil nature is in striking contrast to the message of Christianity, and we see a perfectly content Christian denounce his faith after he has walked long enough on the “narrow path” in the forest (Hawthorne 3).
     The symbol of light in the forest appears to shift in meaning throughout the story. At the beginning, the light is used to represent the dreariness and dangerous nature of the forest path. “He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest of trees” (Hawthorne 3). However, this same darkness might also represent Brown’s ignorance of the world and the people around him. Indeed, this seems to be the case, as Hawthorne uses light later in the story during Brown’s observation of the satanic ritual: “He saw a red light…and…four blazing pines, their tops aflame” (Hawthorne 9 and 10). The fire and red light have obvious satanic symbolism, yet are the red flames of fire not also used to imply knowledge, the progression of human thought, and the brightening of the world by education? Here we have yet another example of symbolic ambiguity in “Young Goodman Brown”; the red light and fire seem to represent simultaneously the evil of Satanism and the furthering of knowledge in place of ignorance. This symbol is as old as creation, however, and dates back to the apple in the story of Adam and Eve, and possibly before. The apple symbolizes both the temptation of the Devil and knowledge, and so it becomes a conflicted symbol: not good, but not completely bad. Perhaps this conflict between meanings is Hawthorne’s way of making a point about humanity being somewhere in the middle, between evil and good, with a lust for knowledge that can sometimes seem in direct opposition to God, and that can sometimes get humans into trouble.
     Certain items in “Young Goodman Brown” seem to further the trend of symbolic duality. Xian-Chun’s assessment of the pink ribbons accents this point very well: “the pink ribbons suggest the tainted innocence and spiritual imperfection of mankind, since pink is a color intermediate between red and white” (Xian-Chun 59). In this reading, the red in the ribbons symbolizes temptation and Satan, and is in direct contrast to the purity of the white. Pink is indeed a combination of both of these colors, but this combination could also symbolize something entirely different. Perhaps Faith’s ribbons are pink because she understands the world and its evils and has chosen to remain on the path to God anyway. Faith is never revealed to have chosen one side or the other during the story, unlike the other townspeople and Brown himself, who are all present at the Satanic ritual. Therefore, she could represent what, in Hawthorne’s opinion, is a truly faithful human: one whose faith is not diminished but is instead empowered by knowledge, even if the knowledge at first seems to be in contradiction to faith.
     The staff is at face value a symbol of the traveler Brown meets in the forest, who is a confusing character himself. He seems to embody the temptation and nature of the Devil, who is often portrayed as an old, wandering man, as well as Brown himself, although “more in expression than features” (Hawthorne 4). Just as interesting as the traveler, however, is the staff he carries, which “bore the likeness of a great black snake” and appeared “to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent” (Hawthorne 4). Brown dismisses this thought as a play of the light in the forest, but the serpentine nature of the staff suggests, like many other symbols in the story, a conflicting mixture of meanings. To start, the serpent could represent the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve to sin in the Creation Story. This would fit in with the character of the traveler in the story, who appears to be tempting Brown to remain on the evil path the entire time. On more than one occasion, the traveler offers Brown the staff. “Take my staff, if you are so soon weary” (Hawthorne 4). The reading of the serpentine staff as a symbol of devilish temptation is reinforced later in the story. Brown’s acceptance of the staff signals his acceptance of evil: “maddened with despair…Brown grasp[ed] his staff and set forth again” (Hawthorne 9). Note the use of the possessive pronoun “his” when referring to the staff. Before this point, the traveler claims the staff as his own, even though he offers it to Brown. This discrepancy blurs the separate identities of Brown and the traveler, and reinforces the evil nature Brown has taken on after picking up the staff.
     The staff is a loaded symbol, however, as serpents have multiple meanings, especially in the Bible. Moses, when appealing to the Pharaoh of Egypt, conducts God’s power to transform his staff into a venomous serpent, sending fear into the Egyptian pagans and dismissing Pharaoh’s magicians as frauds in one move. Although the serpent is used to instill fear in this case, its main purpose is to prove God’s power, and thus the serpent could merely point to a more powerful, and possibly cunning, representation of God. Indeed, although in many cases it seems safe to assume the serpent’s role as a symbol of temptation, the direct relation between the serpentine staff in “Young Goodman Brown” and Moses’ staff seems to suggest that readers are meant to see the serpent in a different way.
     Yet even if the serpent is intended to mean something more than temptation, Hawthorne might be playing on our preconceptions yet again. Perhaps he expects readers to think of the serpent staff as a symbol for temptation and a symbol for God’s, and in a similar vein, faith’s, power in the face of evil. Thus, when Brown picks up the staff, he is accepting evil, fear, and power, yet he is also taking up a new version of his faith.
     Perhaps most confusing is the use of the rock in the forest as an altar, around which the midnight ritual and ceremony takes place. The altar is “surrounded by four blazing pines” which again brings to mind the meaning of fire and light in the story (Hawthorne 10). Yet the altar and its surroundings come to represent the ritual more than anything does. Jamil Selina describes this gathering as an instance of “carnivalesque freedom” (Selina 143). He goes on to explain how the altar and ritual have a dual meaning, as do all other symbols previously discussed: “all the rituals of devil worship parodically mirror church rituals in the story. But, if these rituals sanctioned by the ‘fiend’ ridicule Puritan authority, they also, ironically, endorse ‘solemn’ church rituals” (Selina 143). This analysis seems to indicate that the very perversion of church practices by the Devil indicate that the church is the prevailing factor in human society, as it is impossible to pervert that which does not already exist.
     With the convoluted mixture of symbols and dual meanings, it is clear that “Young Goodman Brown” is a text that can be read hundreds of different ways. It is easy to imagine two readers drawing completely different conclusions after reading this story, and possibly changing those conclusions after a second read, or a third. Yet with all the loaded symbols it would appear that the confusing nature of the text is what makes it so beautiful to study. Perhaps by crafting symbols such as Goodman Brown’s name, Faith’s ribbons, or the serpent staff, Hawthorne intended for readers to think about and embrace new ideas about what these symbols mean, and to a greater degree, what the story means overall. The bleak and depressing ending is not the focus of the story, because the story is not what is important here. The storyline by itself would be nothing without the complex symbols that make it entertaining and rewarding to read many times. In addition, this contradiction of our preconceived notions as readers seems to help us to expand the way we think overall, thereby arming us against the painful aspects of knowledge that were too much for Young Goodman Brown. In other words, Hawthorne might very well be giving us this story as a safeguard against our possible maddening in the pursuit of knowledge, lest our “dying hour” be “in gloom” (Hawthorne 13).
     
     














Works Cited
Apseloff, Stanford, and Marilyn Apseloff. "'YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN': THE GOODMAN." American Notes & Queries 20.7/8 (1982): 103. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 20 Apr. 2011.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Young Goodman Brown." Literature: A Portable Anthology. . Janet E. Gardner, Beverly Lawn, Jack Ridl, Peter Schakel. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2009. Print.
Jamil, S. Selina. "Carnivalesque Freedom in Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown." Explicator 65.3 (2007): 143-145. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 20 Apr. 2011.
Zhu, Xian-chun. "Allegory and symbolism in Hawthorne's Young goodman Brown." US-China Foreign Language 6.1 (2008): 58-60. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 20 Apr. 2011.