In class we read a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne about a minister, Mr. Hooper, who shows up one day to preach wearing a black veil. The whole of the congregation were shocked and spent almost the entirety of the story trying to get Mr. Hooper to remove the veil. In the end, Mr. Hooper dies and is buried with the veil. The various aspects of Nathaniel Hawthorne’ life and background influenced the ideas expressed in “The Minister’s Black Veil”, therefore creating the different character and their views.
A large contribution of his ideas came from himself and his beliefs as a Puritan. In the story, when Mr. Hooper shows up with his black veil, his parishioners find his sermon more eerie than they usually are. In the story is says, “It was
…show more content…
His great great grandfather, William Hathorne, was a very harsh magistrate, or judge, who had, according to an article about Hawthorne, “sentenced a Quaker woman to public whipping.” That article goes on to say that he was a huge defender of Puritan orthodoxy. Later on, William’s son, John, was one of the judges that participated in judging the women during the Salem Witch Trials. Having had two ancestors who had done very horrible things, it seems as though Nathaniel felt shamed. He also thought for a while that having these things in the past are responsible for his family’s decline. All these reasons were to blame for Nathaniel adding a ‘w’ to his name to change it from ‘Hathorne’ to ‘Hawthorne’ to hide the fact that he was in any way related to the fact that he was related to his family. This idea of being shame was shown in the story when Elizabeth came to Mr. Hooper to try and convince him to remove the veil he told her, “‘I, perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil.’” This quote explains that the character, Mr. Hooper, has done things he’s been shameful for, or shameful things that he’s seen done. It shows that Mr. Hooper is sort of being torn at by his own sort of guilt for things in the past. That quote also ties into the fact that Nathaniel Hawthorne felt shamed because of his past and Mr. Hooper does
Mr. Hooper the minister’s is perceived to be a “self-disciplined man”. When he was wearing the veil people in his village believed that he went insane and is guilty of a dark and terrible sin. “He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his face” (1253).The author explains how Mr.Hooper would wear a mask to hide his sins and face which cause people to believe he was awful. The veil becomes the center of discussion for all of those in the congregate the mask all the people wore around others to hide their sins and embraces there guilty. Elizabeth in the story ends her relationship with Mr. Hooper because he will not remove the veil that he's wearing. The veil actually symbolize for the puritans belief that all people souls are black from
This short story reflects the Puritans’ lifestyle in the early colonial stage by using the black veil of Reverend Hooper to guide people through the sinful and struggling life of the Puritans. “The Minister’s Black Veil” is only one of the great stories written by Nathanial Hawthorne, and there are more Romanticism books like The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, and they also talk about the changes and struggles of human
The damage that can come from assumptions is far greater than most people today realize. “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a short story which shows the sad truth of how society makes false assumptions about others. Throughout the story, the townspeople’s assumptions regarding Mr. Hooper causes themselves and Mr. Hooper much distress and sorrow.
“This veil that Mr. Hooper was wearing represents that everyone has something in their hearts that no one else knows about.” As time passed by and the minister still was wearing the veil the townspeople began to become very uncomfortable whenever in his presence. The simple reason behind this is the veil begins to make the congregation fear
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "The Minister's Black Veil," he paints a visual of early American Puritanism. The story takes place in a small New England town of Milford. In this town Mr. Hooper is a reverend who mysteriously wears a black veil one day. Due to the black veil that is worn, Reverend Hooper receives heavy mounts of criticism from the towns people, while rumors are also made by the towns people. Through these acts, performances of contrasts and contradictions are displayed in this short story.
"The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a short story that was first published in the 1836 edition of the Token and Atlantic Souvenir and reappeared over time in Twice-Told Tales, a collection of short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The short story narrates the events following Reverend Mr. Hooper's decision to begin wearing a black veil that obscures his full face, except for his mouth and chin. Mr. Hooper simply arrives one day at the meeting house wearing the semi-transparent black veil and refuses from then on to take it of, leading to the loss of his fiancée and isolation form the world. He is even buried in the black veil. Yet, what is important to note are Mr. Hooper's last words to those surrounding his deathbed. He tells them namely in anger that all of them wear black veils: “I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!”. This declaration underlines the meanings of the veil in the story as symbolic of sin, darkness, and the duality within human nature. Thus, "The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a literary work of art that demonstrates the author's use of allegory to highlight the psychological angle of the story and characters.
Hooper was an all-round good minister, the type people looked up to and “had a reputation of a good preacher, but not an energetic one: he strove to win his people heavenward by mild, persuasive influences rather than thither by the thunders of the Word” (Monteiro 2). The morning he decided to wear the veil, the towns people believed there was a change in his behavior. “But there was something…it was tinged, rather more darkly than usual, with the gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper’s temperament” (Monteiro 2). His fiancé leaves the engagement, leaving him to become emotionally and physically insane. At the end of the story, he is on his death bed where he reveals the veils
It is no secret that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” is a parable. Hawthorne intended it as such and even gave the story the subtitle “a parable.” “The Minister’s Black Veil,” however, was not Hawthorne’s only parable. Hawthorne often used symbols and figurative language to give added meaning to the literal interpretations of his work. His Puritan ancestry also influenced much of Hawthorne’s work. Instead of agreeing with Puritanism however, Hawthorne would criticize it through the symbols and themes in his stories and parables. Several of these symbols and themes reoccur in Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil,” “Young Goodman Brown”, and The Scarlet Letter.
Mr. Hooper chooses to give a sermon on secret sin the day he starts wearing the veil. “The subject had reference to secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them”(pg.3). This can lead us to infer that he uses the veil to make his sermon more effective. The veil actually makes him a better minister because sinners identified with him, “he became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony for sin.”(pg.10) “A subtle power was breathed into his words.”(pg.3), the power that is breathed into his words is a result of the people’s perception of Mr. Hooper; how they associate him with
What he has written many have not been a real life example of something that he has actually experienced, but shows or gives us a view of the way society may have been during his time period. A piece of his that shows this is a short story that is called The Minister's Black Veil. In this story, they main character that goes by “mr. Hooper”, decided to let it be known that he has sinned. In doing this he wears a Black Veil that covers his face to right above his lips, so you can only see his mouth move. As soon as this got back to town rumors immediately began circulating among his Puritan parishioners about his reasons for wearing the veil.
The Minister’s Black Veil, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1836, is a parable about a minister, Mr. Hooper, who constantly wears a mysterious black veil over his face. The people in the town of Milford, are perplexed by the minister’s veil and cannot figure out why he insists on wearing it all of the time. The veil tends to create a dark atmosphere where ever the minister goes, and the minister cannot even stand to look at his own reflection. In Nathaniel Hawthorne 's literary work, The Minister 's Black Veil, the ambiance of the veil, separation from happiness that it creates, and the permanency of the black veil symbolize sin in people’s lives.
In the short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Nathaniel Hawthorne tells the Mr. Hooper’s black veil and the words that can describe between him and the veil. Hawthorne demonstrates how a black veil can describe as many words. Through the story, Hawthorne introduces the reader to Mr. Hooper, a parson in Milford meeting-house and a gentlemanly person, who wears a black veil. Therefore, Mr. Hooper rejects from his finance and his people, because they ask him to move the veil, but he does not want to do it. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Mr. Hooper’s black veil symbolizes sins, darkness, and secrecy in order to determine sins that he cannot tell to anyone, darkness around his face and neighbors, and secrecy about the black veil.
These words aptly put the reason for his veil and secrecy around the reason for donning a veil “But that piece of crape, to their imagination, seemed to hang down before his heart, the symbol of a fearful secret between him and them.” The veil makes him remote and distant and unapproachable so that people can no longer talk freely with him or ask him questions which are intrusive. so another purpose of the veil can be to keep people at arm’s length and avoid detection of the true sins of the Reverend. The question of the veil also shows the inherent wickedness in the Puritan society as the townspeople gossip about the reason for the veil and attributed it to dark reasons.They ignore The Reverend in happy times and call him only in times of need. Even though the Minister was always present for the townspeople they never return this favor and are unfair to him. Christianity preaches that only God can decide who is worthy of punishment and is actually a sinner but we can see the townspeople acting as judge,jury and executioner in this story. This shows the hypocrisy of a puritan society as they ostracize someone without any such evidence of a crime only based on assumptions. Reverand Hooper had never expressly accepted or denied committing any sin however this does not stop the townspeople from gossiping about it and believing him to be a sinner. They ironically engage in sins of backbiting and ridiculing a person and superior to the Reverend and judge him making them guilty of the sin of pride. The veil symbolises something dark and evil.It may be a symbol of the darkness inside a person’s own soul or of a viel that a person wears between himself and his Lord to hide his shame and guilt. The author shows the effect of the veil on the person in the words that“The black veil, though it covers only our pastor 's face, throws its influence over his whole
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Minister’s Black Veil” manifests a duality of conflict – both an external conflict and an internal conflict. It is the purpose of this essay to explore both types of conflict as manifested in the story.
In “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Hooper’s isolation to reveal the judgemental assumptions and moral values of the community. By assuming of the different possibilities of a sin he could have committed, the community demonstrates their true colors. When Hooper first arrives, they are swift to imagine that a grave sin is the purpose for the black veil. Also, by isolating Hooper, the town demonstrates how judgemental they are and how important appearances are to them. Finally, the community fails to realize the intention of the veil by constantly speculating the sin that causes Hooper to wear the veil.