Both stories depend upon illusions, or possible illusions. Does Young Goodman Brown really encounter the devil in his walk through the woods? Or is the man a creature of his imagination? Does Jane really see a woman behind the wallpaper? Or is she hallucinating? In each case the author is ambiguous on the point to involve the reader more firmly in the dilemma of the main character.

Both stories depend upon repressed sexuality. Faith wants Brown to remain with her and have relations. Brown rejects her and goes to fulfill his "evil purpose." Jane both desires and resents John and has no satisfactory outlet for her sexual needs.

Both stories end with the protagonist rejecting the world. Young Goodman Brown becomes an embittered, sour, cynical, standoffish man. Jane descends into madness.

However, Brown manages to live in the world, albeit in an emotionally cramped, pushed-away fashion. He and Faith must have had intercourse—how Brown must have cringed!—because there are plenty of children and grandchildren by the end of "Young Goodman Brown." Jane, on the other hand, is unable to deal with her feelings. One has the feeling that there can be no reconciliation between her and her doctor husband. The note of despair is carried through differently
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The portrayal of the masquerade ball foreshadows the similar setting of the carnival in “The Cask of Amontillado,” which appeared less than a year after “The Masque of the Red Death.” Whereas the carnival in “The Cask of Amontillado” associates drunken revelry with an open-air Italian celebration, the masquerade functions in this story as a celebratory retreat from the air itself, which has become infected by the plague. The masquerade, however, dispels the sense of claustrophobia within the palace by liberating the inner demons of the guests. These demons are then embodied by the grotesque costumes. Like the carnival, the masquerade urges the abandonment of social conventions and rigid senses of personal identity. However, the mysterious guest illuminates the extent to which Prospero and his guests police the limits of social convention. When the mysterious guest uses his costume to portray the fears that the masquerade is designed to counteract, Prospero responds antagonistically. As he knows, the prosperity of the party relies upon the psychological transformation of fear about the Red Death into revelry. When the mysterious guest dramatizes his own version of revelry as the fear that cannot be spoken, he violates an implicit social rule of the masquerade. The fall of Prospero and the subsequent deaths of his guests follow from this logic of the masquerade: when revelry is unmasked as a defense mechanism against fear, then the raw exposure of what lies beneath is enough to kill.

Insanity is one of the topics widely discussed by many writers. The definition of insanity is “not sane; not of sound mind; mentally deranged” (Dictionary.com). In “The Yellow wall Paper” by Charlotte Gilman, “Young Goodman Brown” By Nathaniel Hawthorne, and “A Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Poe insanity is the most prevalent theme. Each story takes place in a prison like environment and each protagonist is suffering from a form of insanity.