The pink ribbons Faith wears in her cap at the very beginning of the story are mentioned three times in the first six paragraphs alone, and so this is a good clue that they are symbolic. Because Young Goodman Brown is going into the forest to meet the Devil, and because he is clearly relying on Faith's goodness to help redeem him, saying "'after this one night, I"ll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven,'" the pink ribbons seem to be symbolic of her innocence and goodness. Further, when Brown later sees one of these ribbons on a tree branch near the witches' Sabbath, he cries, "'My Faith is gone!'" linking her ribbons to her innocence once again. If she is attending the witches' Sabbath, then her innocence surely is as lost as her ribbon is.
Moreover, the old man Brown meets with in the forest carries a staff "which bore the likeness of a great black snake" that seemed so real that it appeared to be a "living serpent." Because the Devil appeared in the shape of a snake or serpent to Eve in the Garden of Eden, snakes are often symbolic of evil. This symbolism is appropriate here since we later learn that the old man is the Devil.
In addition, the fact that Brown enters the forest in order to meet with the devil, and because it is the setting for the witches' Sabbath they attend, the forest can be read as a symbol as well: a symbol of temptation, since it is here that Brown and Faith are both tempted by the Devil and all of their peers to join them in sinfulness and vice.
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