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Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne chronicles the disturbing dream of a young Puritan man in Salem. In the dream, Goodman Brown comes face to face with evil and is forced to examine the nature of evil in man. He is disgusted by the evil he encounters, not realizing his own involvement. Through a psychoanalytic approach to analyzing the text, the reader can see that the meaning of the text lies in discovering the meaning of Goodman Brown’s encounter in the woods.

The story begins with Goodman Brown leaving his wife, Faith for an overnight errand. She begs him not to go, but he does so anyway. Faith is the only symbol of hope in the story. She is a symbolic of love, as in the love between man and woman, and also the love, faith and devotion he has in God. In essence, by leaving Faith in the beginning of the story, he is leaving his faith in God and good. Faith is introduced in the beginning of the story as the devoted wife who warns her husband to stay with her because of a dream that she has.

Without Faith, Goodman Brown he no faith, he is dependent on her: “she’s a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night, I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven” (1). Goodman Brown is counting on Faith to redeem him after his errand with the devil. When Goodman Brown finally meets with the Devil, he declares that the reason he was late was because "Faith kept me back awhile" (1). This statement has a double meaning because the encounter with his wife prevented him from being on time for his meeting with the devil, but his faith to God also delayed his meeting. During his meeting with the “fellow-traveler, Goodman Brown notices the staff held by the man. The staff "bore the likeness of a great black snake" (2). The staff is symbolic of the presence of evil in the meeting. The staff possibly represents the serpent in the story of Adam and Eve. Just as in the bible, the staff leads to destruction. The traveler’s staff...