Good and evil in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman BrownIn "Young Goodman Brown", there is a fight between good and evil with a main character split between the two sides and every other character seemingly on one side or the other through the reader's point of view, although many characters deceive Goodman Brown as to whether they are good or bad. This struggle between the two sides and the deception that causes confusion in Goodman Brown is the source of tension throughout the story. In "Young Goodman Brown", the traits and dialogues of each character, the setting and even the colors mentioned have double meanings and are symbolic of the main binary oppositions of good or evil. As the story begins, Young Goodman Brown “crosses the threshold” of his home, leaving his Faith, whom he calls his “angel on earth” and embarking on a journey into the dark night (page 2186). The reader immediately sees that Faith she is the symbol of goodness, although she wears pink ribbons, a mixture of white and red which symbolizes purity and sexuality, but these are worn within the confines of her marriage, causing the reader to see pink as being sacred that Goodman Brown is undertaking is opposite to everything Faith represents and appears immediately disturbing when good Faith begs him to stay with “trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her of the work to be done tonight” ( 2187). Brown knows that he is leaving for an "evil purpose", but feels justified in doing so because "after this night [he will] cling to [Faith's] skirts and follow her to Heaven", as if his association with Faith, who represents goodness, will save him and allow him to enter Heaven even if he enters the si...... middle of paper ......odman Brown is forever changed by the revelation of the true deceptive nature of his fellow Christians that Night. Everything and everyone he believed in is now seen as evil, not good. His own worship in church is drowned out by "a hymn of sin [that] rang loud in his ear and drowned out the blessed melody" of his song (2195). The bottom line is that Goodman Brown has let evil images and people take away his Faith, but he never stops being “followed by Faith,” even when she is “an old woman” and he is “taken to the grave.” ” (2195). . He stops loving and living according to his faith, but she never stops loving and living according to him. Evil takes over Goodman Brown, making his dying hour grim, but faith remains in the end. Work cited Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Young Goodman Brown." Heath's Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paolo Lauter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. 2186-95.