Use Of Allegory In Goodman Brown

Jalen Wheelock

Mrs. Beck

ENC 1102

6 March 2017

Evil Is Everywhere

In all types of writing authors and poets use several literary devices in order to deliver a message or create a theme in their writing. The use of these literary devices along with tropes helps the readers to understand the central idea of the passage, poem, or narrative. In the story of Goodman Brown, he is faced with a series of events that influences the reader to dig deeper and find the allegory in the story. Nathanial Hawthorne uses diction and symbolism in order to create the allegory that evil is everywhere and will lie in even the deepest parts of a religion that follows God. Throughout the story Hawthorne uses diction to create the allegory that tells the readers there

“…his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.” The staff that was “seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent” represents evil and temptations. Throughout the Bible the snake is a symbol for evil and is understood as the head of temptations for the fact that the snake is what tempted Eve to eat from the forbidden tree. As said by a man named Aslan in a short synopsis of the symbolism in this quote, he says, “Take note that his man constantly offers Goodman Brown his staff to support him on the journey.” The detail about the staff that is always being offered to Brown represents the sin and temptations constantly given to people. The devil also tells Brown to use the staff in order to travel faster and as Eve ate the forbidden fruit and was condemned for disobeying God, Brown was “condemned for his weakness by losing his innocence” (Jill 2012). Hawthorne also calls the evil man a “traveler.” The title “traveler” can be a symbol for the fact that the devil “travels” all over the world delivering temptations to people of all people, even those who belong to God, such as the puritans which Goodman Brown and Faith claim to be. Towards the end of the story Brown is led to

As Goodman Brown faced the evil man with the serpent staff, we too face sin with temptation. The author also makes a point to include Brown’s wife, Faith, as a representation of the puritans and “people in faith” that fall under evil and sin that surrounds them every day. Throughout the book Nathaniel Hawthorne uses diction in order to create imagery that creates scenery and sets the mood as well as symbolism to represent the aspects of the theme of evil in daily life that Hawthorne is trying to indirectly deliver to the