It is impossible to fairly analyze Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "Young Goodman Brown" around a single literary approach. American novelist, essayist, and poet Herman Melville once wrote of Hawthorn's short story that with time, like wine, his taste and body only improve (The Life and Works of Herman Melville). Hawthorne's short story continues to improve with age and draws today's readers into a world filled with a plethora of meanings that they can choose from among its symbolism. Modern readers have interpreted the meaning of Goodman Brown's experience in many ways, but to categorize the story into a single view would destroy its veracity. In order to grasp the allegory that Hawthorne so skillfully communicated, the story must be viewed in a way that recognizes the blending of its historical context and its relationship to religious symbolism in this perspective. Hawthorne's story begins early in the evening, when young Goodman Brown reluctantly leaves his new wife, Faith (aptly named), and heads into the forest to embark on a journey. nocturnal journey into the darkness of his own soul, accompanied by none other than the devil himself. The story takes place in Salem, Massachusetts. Hawthorn establishes the timeline of the story with the description of newlywed Goodman Brown as the son of a man who fought in King Philip's War (Hawthorne 200). While this war was taking place around 1675, Goodman Brown was entering adulthood and was of marriageable age in the early 1690s. The Salem Witch Trials took place in 1692 (Scott Atkins). This time period is important because it shows that the village of Salem was in a state of discriminatory and high religious oppression. The residents of Salem Village live by a strict, pleasure-deprived Puritan moral code, which ultimately leads to terror, fanaticism, widespread allegations of witchcraft, and the deaths of innocents. Any phenomenon that cannot be explained is accepted as witchcraft and generally questioned by no one. Cotton Mather, a prominent Massachusetts theologian of the time, wrote a manual that was used to prosecute "witches." This manual created an unhealthy preoccupation with witchcraft (Atkins). Hawthorne writes that when Goodman Brown makes his way through the forest, he is seemingly engulfed in the darkness of darkness and that he never visibly identifies the travelers he "is sure" are. surpassing him. The mixed sounds “seemed” to pass along the road, and he “would have sworn” that he recognized the voices of people he knows (Hawthorne 202).