Perceptions vs Reality in Young Goodman Brown

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When we meet other people we have first hand impressions of how they are. Sometimes due to things such as being more wealthy, having more friends, or even being more attractive leads people to believe that those with the positive characteristics are living the life. Not realizing that those people they thought were all good might have been through a lot or are not happy in life. The same can be said for people who have negative qualities that are not desired by many. Basically, appearances can be not as they seem and in the short story, “Young Goodman Brown” we see this play out as goodman brown faces the challenges of going in the forest for his evil journey. Through the different characters young good man brown meets, we see that appearances …show more content…

One of these characters was young goodman browns wife Faith, who plays a big part in the fable. She wears pink ribbons which symbolize innocence and purity, “letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap”(Young Goodman Brown). He loves faith very much from her pink ribbons to her entire persona, “she’s a blessed angle on earth;and after this one night I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven”(Young Goodman Brown). The ability for him to compare her to an angel, truly shows his admiration and zeal he has for his wife. Another character we are introduced to is a mysterious man that leads young goodman brown in his journey to the dark forest , “beheld the figure of a man , in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree”. This man is presented as a helpful guide to goodman brown, but later in the story we see that he had bad intentions for him. He had a snake staff which resembles the story in the bible when the devil (masquerading as a snake) told Adam and eve to eat from the tree of life,”his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake”. It has similarity, because the devil led them to do something bad and in young goodman brown he is leading goodman to the evil forest. Which means his travel guide is the devil and young goodman brown does not

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