Young Goodman Brown

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Continuing with the thought of Faith being a symbol, her pink ribbons are also very important to the story. They can be seen as a symbol for youth and innocence. But they can also be viewed as playful and whimsical, these all go hand in hand. The quote, “Letting the wind play with the pink ribbons…” (Hawthorne 1). Again makes you think of a child, there is an innocence that can be seen. There is also the quote, “Faith, with the pink ribbons” (Hawthorne 1). The motif of her pink ribbons is prevalent. When the ribbons are mentioned, Faith is also mentioned along with it meaning they are connected. The next quote is definitely what pushes Brown over the edge, “But something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon” (Hawthorne 5). Brown was really affected by this because up to this point in the story Faith and her ribbons have always been attached. This is the first time they have been separated. But there is still much that even Brown did not know. Faith was not as innocent as he thought and it was not a coincidence that the author chose pink for color of her ribbons. White symbolizes purity and pink symbolizes sin, and if those colors are mixed together it creates pink. Everyone has two sides, the one they want you to see and the side they hide away only for themselves. Pink is an ambiguous color, so it can be open to interpretation in many ways.

As can be seen from above, we are all born with an innocence that is lost as we grow up, and sometimes things happen in life that cannot be explained and whether they are good or bad it is up to us to decide where we direct those events to lead on to. Brown chose to live his life upset about what happened. He held onto grudges and lived unhappily. He unfortunately lost his innocence in a way that tore him apart from society and caused him to live in the constant fear that everything that is said cannot be true. He realizes that people are only show what they want to be seen. So it is important to take life with a grain of salt because not everything is as it appears.

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Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama. Ed. Robert Di Yanni. 6th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2008, 553-562.Print.