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Comparing Forest In The Scarlett Letter And Young Goodman Brown

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“Sayest thou so?" replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. “Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the forest yet” (Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown 2). Both similar in the novels written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter and Young Goodman Brown exemplify the forest as a place of temptation towards relentless sin. Even though Hawthorne portrayed the forest in this way it later takes on the role of freedom from civilization and authority in The Scarlett Letter. The reader is initially introduced to the dual symbolism of the forest in Young Goodman Brown when Brown unfortunately gets lost in the process of running from the devil and uncovers the true hidden depths of the forest. Throughout his …show more content…
All of them gathered for the same reason, the ability to see the secret deeds of others. As the novel goes on it states “The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air, passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered or solitary Christian prayed.” (Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown 5) the forest is shown to be a place of wickedness; where anything related to being pure and holy is unwelcome. Even though there was a forest present in The Scarlet Letter, it truly didn’t represent the same meaning as it did in Young Goodman Brown. In the The Scarlet Letter it seemed as

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