Faith’s name is a double entendre because while she represents Goodman Brown’s connection to his Puritan faith in God, she also demonstrates the corruption of his faith when she is seen participating in the Black Mass. There is an older man in the woods representing him in the future.

His journey into the woods represents a journey into his own heart because he sees himself. Hawthorne refers to his protagonist by the title “Goodman.” While such titles as “Goodman” and “Goodwife” were the Puritan forms of “Mr.” and “Mrs.,” in this story the name underscores the moral crisis Brown faces as well as the hypocrisy of other so-called pious, “good” townspeople, like Goody Cloyse and and Goody Cory. Young Goodman Brown is a story filled with many symbols such as demons being symbolic of internal struggles. Classic literary aptonyms include Shakespeare’s Harry Hotspur, James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, and Washington Irving’s Ichabod Crane. An aptonym is a name that is particularly appropriate for the character or person to whom it belongs. The Use of Aptonyms: Hawthorne makes use of a literary device known as the aptonym, sometimes called the aptronym or euonym. The dreamlike nature of his journey haunts him for the rest of his life. Despite the turmoil he has experienced and the visions he has seen, there is no tangible evidence that any of it really happened.

At the end of the story, as Goodman Brown emerges from his trials in the forest and returns to his life in Salem, he wonders whether his adventure was all a dream. At the beginning, just as Goodman Brown prepares to head into the woods, Faith warns her husband that she has had a dream warning of troubling events to come. Even though the narrator stays close to Goodman Brown’s perspective, much of the narrative is shrouded in mystery. Narration and Dreamlike Structure: Dreams and dream logic play an important role in Hawthorne’s story.

The young goodman brown