When Goodman Brown leaves his wife to go on a walk in the woods, it is somewhat foreshadowing. He is leaving his wife,Faith, and when he returns he is no longer youthful and happy, but rather bitter. He goes to grave like this as Hawthorne writes,"besides neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom." Hawthorne uses symbolism in the names of the characters. Goodman Brown, his first name can represent his life before his experience in the woods he was a happy and Goodman, but after he realized that he was surrounded by sinners and became a bitter man. Brown is a dark and just gloomy color. His wife ironically has the name Faith. In the beginning of the story he leaves his wife and this is symbolic of him leaving his faith later on.
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I think the symbolism with his wife, Faith comes more in to play when he is in the forest. When the evil clouds grab her and take her way, he has "Lost his Faith (in god)". After losing her, he picks up the devil's staff - now following his new deity. Also, I'm not quite sure whether or not the people around him were truly sinners, it's possible the satanic visions he had were only created by the devil to make him a bitter man. That's totally debatable though.
ReplyDeletei think its true for both cases he lost faith the woman he had and also faith in himself and/or god which overall the factors made him a sad and lonely man ending with him dieing alone.
ReplyDeleteooooh... i like that. I mean i obviously recognized the names but for some reason i didn't think about them all together. good point though, the brown thing, color and all.
ReplyDeleteAn intersting exchange, here, but be careful to avoid the very binary trap that Brown himself has fallen into (the real "fall" may be a fall into this kind of thinking)--is the "Devil" really a separate person "out there" that one can resist? Was "Faith" really once "pure" and now tainted? she has always worn a pink ribbon--more suggestive than at first appearance (pink = red + white, a blend, hue or red; and red of course relates to other color imagery in the story, esp. fire...)
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