Young Goodman Brown
.... Brown experiences several instances in the forest in which he expresses a desire to stop and go home, but he always continues, because he still has Faith. When a pink ribbon flutters down to him, however, he goes mad and continues on to the communion, and eventually believing himself ‘Faithless’. Hawthorne's use of more easily interpreted incidents and symbols like these only reinforce the idea that this is a story about much more than easy, clear divisions of human belief and behavior. Hawthorne knowingly used symbols that are slightly amusing in their simplicity because he is commenting, again, on the journey itself. His irony implies that this is anything but an easy journey that starts out at dusk, made by a man with a wife named Faith, who meets witches in the woods, witnesses the totally corrupt nature of all humanity and then dies a lonely, tormented death. It's the perfect Christian fairy tale nightmare, and Hawthorne seems to have used it for exactly this reason, “The journey itself is never so easy”. Brown returns to his town and sees the entire community involved in completely hypocritical activities as though nothing out of the ordinary is happening. There is a feeling that Hawthorne is yet again suggesting that none of those simple allegories, whether in favor of good or evil, are enough to represent something as complex as faith. Hawthorne's humor is slight and insinuating, but he uses it to talk successfully around the boundary of the issue he wants to address instead of choosing clarity. Hawthorne uses many other pairings to illustrate his ideas. The difference between dark woods and the light of the town in daytime is a contrast between public and private behavior. The uncertainty of a journey through the woods compared to the safety of a home and family is a pairing that clearly illustrates a spiritual struggle for Puritan righteousness. Also, the fantasy of a nightmare is contrasted with the reality of the people in Salem to reinforce the idea that good and evil have been set up as strict categories. These categories exist so that not even the religious figures of the community fit a common stereotype. Hawthorne is not describing the hypocrisy, which undoubtedly exists in the world, and allowing Goodman Brown be a genuinely religious individual in his failure to accept what he sees in the forest. More accurately, he is concerned with the journey itself than with any specific outcome. Goodman Brown's abrupt, gloomy death seems to reinforce this. Had Hawthorne been concerned with making a very particular statement about what he co...