Corruption In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

One major theme in the short story “Young Goodman Brown” is the weakness of humans to corruption. The author of the story, Nathaniel Hawthorne, uses many elements of fiction to depict how even the holiest of people can fall victim to evil and corruption. Some elements of fiction used to support Hawthorne’s theme include characterization to help develop the theme and plot to explain the theme. The first element of fiction used is characterization; characterization adds extra detail needed to fully develop the theme of the story. Without characterization the characters would be flat and boring, which would make getting the theme across to the reader very difficult. There are three main characters in “Young Goodman Brown,” the first being Goodman Brown himself. Goodman Brown is a major characterization key in the trying to show the theme; he
Throughout the story he is trying to resist the temptation and stay pure, but by him willingly going into the dark forest, represents his ability to be corrupted. Another main character in the story is a traveler that Goodman Brown meets in the forest. The traveler is not just any traveler; he is actually the devil and throughout the story he tries to convince Goodman Brown to give in to the wickedness. The last main character is Faith; she is Goodman Brown’s new wife and a representation of Goodman Brown’s spiritual faith. Faith wears pink ribbons in her hair which becomes an important detail in the story’s plot.
The next element of fiction is plot and the story’s plot describes how susceptible people are to corruption and how even people of good faith can be led astray to do evil. Throughout the story you see many people from the village that have been corrupted