While reading “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, I couldn't help but feel a constant sense of dread. The root of this could come from the story's dark setting deep in a "haunted forest" or from Brown's mysterious companion "Devil". As I read, another story came to mind; the story of “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe. In Poe's story, the same thrilling emotion can be felt when he describes the reunion of two friends within "the House of Usher." With the mansion's "eye-shaped windows" and "painful feeling," Poe wastes no time creating the Gothic ambiance. Through their distinct writing styles, Hawthorne and Poe establish a common Gothic theme in their stories. In Hawthorne's story "Young Goodman Brown", the setting takes place in the heart of a forest. As Brown travels through the forest, he takes "a dreary road, obscured by all the darkest trees of the forest." This description begins to paint a picture in the reader's mind of where Brown is going. Brown continues to discuss the specialness of the forest, saying, “It was as lonely as it could be; and there is this peculiarity in such solitude, that the traveler does not know who may be hidden by the innumerable trunks and thick branches above…” This is not the kind of forest one would see in a book for children, it is a dark landscape. a place where you feel cut off from the rest of the world. Hawthorne makes his setting give the story a dark feeling to foreshadow the darker events to come. The characters in “Young Goodman Brown” also add to the gothic theme of the story. The first character that stands out is Brown's wife, Faith. Before Brown leaves for the forest, she tells him, "Please delay your journey until sunrise and... middle of paper... self-reflection, just as Faith might be seen as such too. She shares his face and is Rodrick's biggest burden. Although these two stories were written by two different authors, they give the reader the same creepy feeling. The characters of Poe and Hawthorne are reflected in almost every story. Brown was an honest man and when he entered the heart of the forest he was plunged into a period of mania. The narrator of Poe's tale was a sensible man who also experienced a period of mania after spending time at the Usher estate. Through their characters, symbolism, and settings, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne set a similar theme in both their stories. Works cited by the Shmoop editorial team. “Summary of the Fall of the House of Usher.” Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., November 11, 2008. Web. February 27, 2014.Poe, Edgar Allan. Eight tales of terror. New York: Scholastic, 1978. Print.