ey walk off together he is immediately chided for being 15 minutes late. Goodman Brown plaints, "Faith kept me back awhile." This familiarity with his wife's name to a stranger would be inappropriate on any occasion no less so on this one. This more than hints at a longer relationship between the two men. But when did he even have the time to make the appointment being with his wife for three solid months? He lives in Salem Village and the meeting is in Boston.It is strange that the 15 minutes would be mentioned at all as was mentioned the three months that Goodman Brown had been married. If we were speaking coincidentally 15 minutes is one quarter of an hour as is three months one quarter of a year. Are we being asked to equate these two numerical oddities? Curiously how Nathaniel Hawthorne would weave these symbols so well into the account. A marriage is the beginning of two people union as one. The date of the wedding is as the beginning of the first year of the union. If the marriage was to least 50 years, dissolved by one partner dying, halfway would be 25 years: "Midway this journey of our life." For example: equating this to the calendar year January 1st would be the wedding date. Three months later would be April 1st. This is the traditional date for the dawn of creation for both the Christ and the antichrist. Christ was conceived on this date and was born nine months later, December 25th. Christ being circumcised eight days later would be Goodman Brown's anniversary date. The symbolism in this allegorical story is incredible when equating the span of a year to the life of an individual. This allegorical narrative suggests the two roads taken. Faith, Goodman Brown's wife, represent the spiritual or path of light and Goodman Brown represents the demonic or dark path. On April 1st it would seem they consummated the celebration of creation alone.When calculating this weekly ritual, of leaving the good wife home a...
