This essay will demonstrate the types of characters present in “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, whether they are static or dynamic, flat or round, and whether they are depicted by showing or by telling. RWB Lewis in "The Return to Rime: Hawthorne" states: "...there is always more to the world in which Hawthorne's characters operate than any one of them can see at a single glance. glance” (77). This is especially true with the flat or two-dimensional characters typically found in "Young Goodman Brown." These typical characters are built on a “single idea or quality” and are presented without much “individualizing detail” (Abrams 33). Of course, faith represents or symbolizes the theological virtue of faith; Goody Cloyse, as a catechist, represents “goodness”; the anonymous traveling companion in the woods is the symbol of “evil”. QD Leavis explains this symbolic use of characters: "The first batch of works that I specified [including "Young Goodman Brown"] is essentially dramatic, its use of language is poetic, and it is symbolic, and richly, all as is the writing of the dramatic poet. . . . Where the “symbol” is the thing itself, without separable paraphrasable meaning as in an allegory: the language is directly evocative (27). The flat character Faith is not developed like her husband; his dialogue is limited to the first few paragraphs. She only utters four sentences in the whole story: “Dearest heart,” she whispered softly and rather sadly, when her lips were near his ear, “please postpone your journey until sunrise. sun and sleep in your own bed. This evening. A lonely woman is troubled by such dreams and thoughts that she is sometimes afraid of herself. Please stay with me tonight, dear husband... middle of paper...... ng Goodman. Brown." 1835. http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~daniel/amlit/goodman/goodmantext.htmlKaul, AN "Introduction". In Hawthorne – A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by AN Kaul Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Leavis, QD “Hawthorne as Poet.” In Hawthorne – A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by AN Kaul Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Lewis, RWB “The Return.” into Time: Hawthorne.” In Hawthorne – A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by AN Kaul Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Swisher, Clarice “Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography.” edited by Clarice Swisher, California: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Wagenknecht, Edward Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Man, His Tales and Romances New York: Continuum Publishing Co.., 1989.