"""Young Goodman Brown" has two distinct settings. What are the differences between these two settings? What significance does each setting have?""

The
story is set partly in Salem, and partly in the wooded wilderness around the town. At first
glance, the difference is pretty straightforward: the town is good, the woods are bad.
Fortunately, there is a little more to it than that. Hawthornes story is about hypocrisy and
sin. Goodman Brown has grown up in Salem; he has a natural respect for his elders, including his
grandfather and his religious teacher, Goody Cloyse. In town, he sees them as good, upright
people. But it is in the woods that he mysteriously meets his grandfather with the serpent
staff, and overhears Goody Cloyse, the minister and Deacon Gookin proclaiming the devil and
discussing a satanic ritual. And it is in the woods that Brown witnesses this black
mass.

So perhaps another way of understanding the town/forest dichotomy
has...