Young Goodman Brown 2 Essay, Research Paper

Young Goodman Brown was an interesting story because of its setting, characters, and plot. The story was set in the late Puritan Era when people were scared of the woods due to the mysterious witches and savage Indians. Puritans really liked true colors such as white and red. If white was worn it meant pure but if red was worn it meant evil. As Puritans, an individual had to have pure thoughts, and sex was only thought of to procreate if married.

Young Goodman Brown, Faith, fellow traveler, and the townspeople are the characters in Young Goodman Brown. Young Goodman Brown means an inexperienced good standing citizen with an ordinary last name. All he wanted was to advance in his social and religion status. His wife, Faith, is a sweet girl who wants her husband to stay home all the time. She wore pink ribbons in her hair, which in the Puritan Era pink resembled pollution. Pink is a mixture of white and red which was not a true color. Today in society pink means innocence, which is ironic from the Puritan way. The fellow traveler could have been either Young Goodman Brown s own personal devil or his father. The townspeople were church going people yet in the end they contradicted their own values and beliefs.

The plot of Young Goodman Brown had a lot of twists and turns. The story started out with Young Goodman Brown needing to go to an important meeting and to get hoping to raise his religion and social status. He took a simple journey in the forest and it turned into a complicated ending. He met up with a traveler who was waiting for him in the woods. They were walking on a narrow path but it was hard to stay on because of the distraction and they ended up on a wide path. In the Bible it says a narrow path leads to heaven, and a wide path leads to hell. This was not a simple journey for Young Goodman Brown as a young man because he must have pure thoughts about anything. Strange things began to happen on his journey. There was a lady hobbling along the path all alone, and then he found pink ribbons fluttering in the wind from a tree branch. He realized his Faith was gone. This simple journey ended when he came to a clearing in the forest and he found people from his church engaged in a witching Sabbath. This is when he lost all faith in everyone and even his wife. For the rest of his life, he developed a new faith and judged everyone from what he saw that night in the woods.