Allegory In Young Goodman Brown And The Devil And Tom Walker

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In the following short stories - “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Minister’s Black Veil” also by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving, all have a deeper meaning than shown on paper. In all three of these short stories, the common allegory/ main idea is that looks can be deceiving. Not every person is who they seem to be on the outside and this lesson is learned by reading these three stories together. “Young Goodman Brown” implies the common allegory because it shows that the townspeople weren’t who Brown thought they were. A young, good man takes a journey through life and loses his Faith along the way. Toward the end of the story he notices that the people who have taught him good, …show more content…
In “Young Goodman Brown,” the first symbol present is Faith. Faith in this story represents Goodman Brown’s Faith in God. When he leaves his home and his wife Faith, he’s leaving his faith in god behind to go on this journey to the secret location. When he arrives at this destination he yells “My Faith is gone!” When saying that, it means that his faith is god is lost. The next symbol is the path he takes to the destination. The path symbolizes his journey through life. The last symbol in this story is Faith’s pink ribbon that she wore. The pink ribbon symbolizes innocence. In the beginning the ribbon was secure on Faith’s cap when Brown left for the woods, but towards the middle Goodman Brown loses his innocent faith and becomes certain that Faith has been tempted by the devil when he sees her pink ribbon fluttering down from the cloudy sky and snagged in a tree. In “The Minister’s Black Veil,” The black veil is a symbol of secret sin and how terrible human nature can be. As Mr. Hooper is on his death bed he tells the spectators that ” I look around me, and lo! On every visage a Black Veil!” Hooper means by this that everyone has a secret sin, a sin that they aren’t exactly proud of. In the last story, “The Devil and Tom Walker,” one of the few symbols that was found was the shortcut Tom takes through the swamp. This symbolizes some of the shortcuts taken by people to try to get ahead in the world. However, such paths

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