Examine the seemingly supernatural events Brown experiences as he penetrates ever deeper into the forest. Can the reader determine whether those...

Because
the other answer did such a good job of examining the supernatural events that may or may not
actually occur, I'm going to focus on the second part of the question: the purpose of the
ambiguity.

Hawthorne is deliberately ambiguous because his focus is not on
whether or not the events of the forest actually took place. In fact, none of that matters,
because to , the events did happen and he shifted his entire existence accordingly. Never again
could he look upon the townspeople as he had before entering the woods. His relationship with
both his wife Faith and his spiritual faith is destroyed, because every symbol of religion
around him, from Goody Cloyse's catechism to Salem's minister, is forever associated with the
sin he believes occurred.

Rather than focusing on the validity of YGB's
forest visions, Hawthorne instead wants us to focus on what we know happened: YGB knew that he
was embarking on an evil journey, and did it anyhow. Upon leaving Faith at the...