Young Goodman Brown

"Faith kept me back a while" said Goodman Brown in the story, "Young Goodman Brown". By just reading this sentence, one can easily assume that Goodman Brown was actually talking about faith, not Faith his wife. I think that Nathaniel Hawthorne purposefully named Brown's wife Faith. When you think of Faith you think of angelic things. In this story Hawthorne uses symbols to represent the innocense and angelic qualities of Faith. In the first paragraph, Hawthorne writes, "And Faith...thrust her own pretty head...letting the wind play with the pink ribbons on her cap". And as Brown met up with the traveller in the forest, the traveller held a serpent's staff - symbolic of devilish and evil things. In essence, Brown left his faith and God to meet up with the devil in the forest.