Young Goodman Brown Response

When reading “Young Goodman Brown,” I was confused at first. I had to reread the text approximately three times to grasp a better understanding of the message, Nathaniel Hawthorne, was trying to betray. The first line that caught my eye, out of all the times reading this short story, was "So they parted; and the young man pursued his way, until, being about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him, with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons."

At the beginning of the story Young Goodman Brown is leaving Salem village to embark on a journey. Before Goodman Brown set out on his journey, him and his wife, Faith, exchanged goodbyes. I liked line number six because of the emotions I could feel being drawn from this sentence. Love, worry, sadness, and understanding was just a couple of emotions I, myself, could partake from this line. You gained the feeling of pensive sadness after reading the beginning of line six. But, the primary aspect of this sentence that made me attracted to it was at the end of the line, when Goodman Brown mentioned Faith’s pink ribbons once again. Goodman Brown intrigued me to find what significance these ribbons had in the story.

When we first read about Faith, Hawthorne makes a note of the pink ribbons by writing, “letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap,” My first interpretations of the pink ribbons were that they represent innocence and kind-heartedness, or that the fabrics themselves are just a modest, innocent decoration. But, when I start to think of the color pink, I automatically associate the color with a baby girl; babies, in general, are innocent and pure. So, after reading the short story, I concluded that the pink ribbon must represent Faith’s purity.

I liked line number six because of the emotions the sentence evoked, and the knowledge I gained from it. I could feel Faith’s yearning for Goodman Brown to return home safely, and for him not to leave on his journey at all. Also, any reader can get the sensation that Goodman Brown is sad because he does not want to leave his dear wife. I gained much knowledge about how close the young couple was, and how the pink ribbons played a very significant role in helping you grasp a better understanding of the story.

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