...Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" is an allegory in which a young Puritan ignores the warning of his wife, who is named Faith, and ventures into a dark forest, where the first person he meets is a mysterious "traveler" who carries a staff "which bore the likeness of a great black snake."Hamilton, Essential Literary Terms (68-97) -- Jerz: EL150 (Intro to Literary Study)
Though it seems like so long ago (four years ago), I did read this story before in my Freshman english class in high school. This reference helped me to better differentiate the two concepts of allegory and symbolism, since I was familiar with it. I remember spending at least one entire class period going over all of the different allegorical meanings in that story. The meanings were all pretty straight forward. There really wasn't any room for debate, like there is with symbolism.