Analysis of Hawthrone´s The Mminister´s Black Veil

“He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his face…”

We take a trip back to the lovely Puritan era to understand the content matter of Hawthorne’s The Minister’s Black Veil. In this tale, Reverend Hooper, a young, unassuming, and unremarkable minister in everyway, suddenly dons a black veil, to the shock and mystery of the small town he preaches in. He becomes a pariah with his insistence to remove it, and loses his following and even his fiancee. He insists even on his deathbed to keep the veil into the grave.

The big, unsolved mystery, however—that remains unsolveable for both the reader and the townspeople—is why the veil? Hawthorne leaves this open to interpretation, but in his typical fashion, leaves a likely opening for symbolism. “And lo! On every visage a black veil!” says Reverend Hooper, pointing to a possible explanation: that he is representing something that all people harbor with a physical manifestation—the veil.

Black Veil 1

But what could he be representing? “The subject of the sermon 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” The minister’s sermon the day he began wearing his veil was on secret sin. In this passage, and with this information, the narrator points us in a direction of the veil representing ‘secret sin’, which is a religious idea of sin that we hide away and pretend like it doesn’t exist. We all do that to a degree even now, right? Back then, in an age where appearances were key, it was very prevalent, and a good topic to preach on to a seemingly picture-perfect town (which are never what they seem).

But a...

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...me the story was written by Hawthorne in the first place. The lesson here for us might just be to shed our black veils, so to speak, before we find it too late.

Black Veil 2

Hawthorne’s a pretty good person to turn to for short stories about sin and evil, and “The Minister’s Black Veil” is no exception. The master of symbolism and allegory strikes again with a massive symbol, more unsolveable than a Rubik’s Cube. Though we can hunt for an explanation—even Edgar Allen Poe interpreted this story—we are left with a similar sense of eerie wonder as the townspeople” What is up with that thing on his face?

Obviously, there are other explanations for the veil, and while I took the road frequently traveled, its because it seems to hold the most credence of all the theories. But please feel free to explore any other interpretations.

Don’t forget your veils…