Nathaniel Hawthorne is the 18th century romantic writer widely regarded for his dynamic literary works creates allegory through his characterization. In his novel The Scarlet Letter; and short stories “The Minister's Black Veil” and “The Birthmark” Hawthorne explores the dangers of self righteousness and the the effects in can have one one's self, loved one, and society as a whole. His use of the characters Arthur Dimmesdale, Parson Hooper, and Aylmer, dives into the different facets of the strive towards for superiority. Through The Scarlet Letter Arthur Dimmesdale is used to explore the true cost of forming one’s self to fit into a mold of greatness. In the novel Dimmesdale is a minister that is racked with guilt over his adulterous …show more content…
affair with Hester Prynne in a very strict Puritan society. He is characterized by his self-loathing and his holier-than- thou attitude. For he has a need to be seen as right, not only by God but also by those around him. As quoted by Pearl “What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. "In the dark night-time, he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder!...But, here, in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with his hand always over his heart!”(Hawthorne 184) . This quote highlights how Dimmesdale pushes away Hester and Pearl. He does have a desire to be with them. He is in constant pain and suffering over his own guilt and unwillingness to confess yet his love for them and his fear over his own state cannot combat the pride he feels in being a minister. In Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark” the consequences of one’s narcissism is shown through the mad scientist Aylmer. In the story Aylmer is married to the beautiful Georgiana who happens to have a small birthmark on her face. This Aylmer finds to be a sign of imperfection and ruinous to her beauty and in his attempt to remove the birthmark and achieve perfection he ends up killing her instead. As stated by Kusuma “What Aylmer did is the symbol of a man that is only cause destruction or problem to another because of his egoism.” This plays into the idea of how one's inflated sense of self can cause harm to who happen to be caught in the crossfire. As shown in the story “In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife’s liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer’s sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana’s beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight"(Hawthorne) Aylmer is unable to accept what he has seen as sinful in his wife and conversely he can not look into himself and see his own wickedness.
His very self-centred point of view turns out to be his wife's downfall. In this short story “The Minister's Black Veil” Hawthorne delves into the idea of societal righteousness and highlights how one is able to see pass this. This story follows Parson Hooper - a Puritan reverend who throws his town into confusion when he appears one day with a black veil around his face. Which he reveals to his parishioners as a representation of his sin and leads to him being ostracized while also gaining a new perspective. This story is told in third person narration and focuses less on Rev. Hooper himself, but more on the people around him. As put by Baker “ Rev. Hooper wears a black veil in order to hide his face from the gaze of others and from himself just as everyone else in the community puts on a façade of righteousness and innocence in order to hide his sinfulness from the knowledge of everyone else in the community and even divulge one's inner self righteousness from themselves” This is further exemplified by his last dying
words “ When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his best beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and die! I look around me, and,lo! On every visage a black veil!”(Hawthorne). He is calling to the hidden sins of those around him who fear him for he is the only one who is open about his sinfulness. In his works Nathaniel Hawthorne uses his characterization to explore major ideas and allegory. He dives into the different sectors of characters hubris. His use of Arthur Dimmesdale to explore the inner turmoils of a puritanical lifestyle. Aylmer to show the effect of those never satisfied with what is given to them. And Parson Hooper is used to give the perspective of an outsider looking into not only their own faults and misgivings but also the faults in their own society.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Minister’s Black Veil”, the reader is introduced to Parson Hooper, the reverend of a small Puritan village. One Sunday morning, Hooper arrived to mass with a black veil over his impassive face. The townspeople began to feel uneasy due to their minister’s unusual behavior. When Parson appeared, “Few could refrain from twisting their heads towards the door; many stood upright….” (Monteiro 2). Throughout the story Hooper does not take off the black veil and the townspeople, including Reverend Clark from a nearby village, treat him as if he were contagious disease. A veil typically is used to represent sorrow, but in this story it is used to represent hidden sins. No one exactly knows why he
Before Dimmesdale’s untimely death in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale committed the sins of adultery and lying. In order to keep his sins a secret, Dimmesdale spoke nothing of his involvement in the affair until it tore him apart from the inside out.When Dimmesdale tried to confess his sin to his congregation, they saw the confession as if it were part of his sermon. “He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood”. (Hawthorne 171) Instead of correcting their assumption, Dimmesdale went along with it, once more hiding his sinfulness. When Dimmesdale finally confessed his sin openly...
In “The Minister’s Black Veil,” for example, Hawthorne describes how, “perhaps the palefaced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister, as his black veil to them”(2). This directly contrasts the “light” faces of the members of the congregation with the darkness of the minister’s veil. By stating that the minister was just as afraid of the people as the people were of him, Hawthorne indicates that the people fear the minister due to the abrupt reveal of his mysterious sin, but the minister also somewhat fears the people and the secrets they hold deep within their hearts. The people of the town are supposedly pure and innocent, yet it is clear that many of the citizens carry the burden of their own evils. Although the minister boldly comes forward with his own sin, he still feels the pain of the loneliness, scorn, and spite that has come with his statement. Hawthorne represents the discomfort the guilty townspeople feel when in the presence of Mr. Hooper when he describes how they were, “conscious of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil” (3). Once again, this use of light and dark imagery supports Hawthorne’s argument that people, even those who claim to be pure and innocent, are capable of sin. The townspeople in Mr. Hooper’s community feel the burden of their own sins when they come in
Both of these stories revolve around a lot of symbolism. These stories, since they really don't make a lot of sense on their own, force the reader to look deeper in an attempt to understand the ideas that Hawthorne tries to get across.
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
Guilt, shame, and penitence are just a few of the emotions that are often associated with a great act of sin. Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, a highly respected minister of a 17th century Puritan community, is true example of this as he was somehow affected by all of these emotions after committing adultery. Due to the seven years of torturous internal struggle that finally resulted in his untimely death, Mr. Dimmesdale is the character who suffered the most throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s ever present guilt and boundless penance cause him an ongoing mental struggle of remorse and his conscience as well as deep physical pain from deprivation and self inflicted wounds. The external influence of the members of his society
Life is unpredictable, and through trial and error humanity learns how to respond to conflicts and learns how to benefit from mistakes. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a character who changes and gains knowledge from the trials he faces, but first he has to go through physical, spiritual, and emotional agony. In the midst of all the havoc, the young theologian is contaminated with evil but fortunately his character develops from fragile to powerful, and the transformation Dimmesdale undergoes contributes to the plot’s climax.
Without an honorable reputation a person is not worthy of respect from others in their society. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, the struggle to shake off the past is an underlying theme throughout the novel. Characters in this novel go through their lives struggling with trying to cope with the guilt and shame associated with actions that lost them their honorable reputation. Particularly, Hawthorne shows the lasting effect that sin and guilt has on two of the main characters in the book: Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale.
Everyone masks themselves with false pride while covering up who they really are. No one is truly and utterly honest with others or even themselves. Such is the case of Mr. Hopper, a pastor who Hawthorne portrays in The Minister’s Black Veil. The story follows his life as a minister who wears a black veil over his face everywhere he goes. Hawthorne uses metaphysical characterization of the black veil in Mr. Hopper’s life to prove that pride causes Christian leadership to be ineffective. Hawthorne shows that pride causes Christian leadership to become ineffective because it creates a false idea of control, it disfigures the proper image of man, it prevents genuine self-examination, it establishes a flaws perspective on the world, and the most
Nathaniel Hawthorne in “The Minister’s Black Veil” is able to show the hypocrisy and the overemphasis of the Puritan people and their beliefs by engaging the reader in this short story by using “a gentlemanly person” (409) who decides to start wearing a black veil over his face. As Milford’s finest gather on “the porch of [the] meeting house” (409) and enjoy the hope of another Sunday service, the townspeople’s sunny disposition and picturesque setting soon changes as Parson Hooper emerges with a “simple piece of crape” covering his face. This unusual appearance of the Reverend to the townspeople even has some of them feeling faint and forcing some women “of delicate nerves to leave the service” (410). Even though Parson Hooper’s demeanor and his polite and gracious behavior is the same as always, and his preaching is much more interesting and entertaining, the townspeople perceive their minister far differently. As Parson Hooper continues to don the veil, people start to stare at him and rumors begin to fly, especially since his sermon dealt with the topic of secret sin. As the people make him a social pariah, Parson Hooper becomes a representation of hidden sin and an object of dread. Even as death knocks on his door, Parson Hooper still will not allow himself to be unveiled, in fact, Hooper finally reveals that no one should be afraid of him, but of one another because “men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled” (417) all because of a simple black veil. Through the use of symbols, Hawthorne is able to use this short story to prove that the community people and the Puritan’s religion and their beliefs are hypocritical and over zealous.
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.
‘Honesty is the best policy’; ‘Always be yourself”, are common phrases many parents tell their children and as common as they may be, being honest and being true yourself contributes to individual happiness and contentness. ‘The Scarlet Letter’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a novel that dives deep into these key themes of honesty and integrity and the consequences of doing the opposite action. One of the main characters, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is a minister in 17th century Puritan New England who has deteriorating health because of his lies and guilt. Dimmesdale commits adultery with a beautiful woman in the town, Hester Prynne, whose husband, Roger Chillingworth, returns from Europe later on. Pearl, who is a product of Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin, is never told who her father is. Dimmesdale gives sermons on sin and honesty yet hides his own sin. He is portrayed as a hypocrite and has inner battles with himself because he deceives people of his true nature. Hawthorne uses the character Dimmesdale to portray the harsh consequences of not being true to ourselves and being deceitful of our true nature.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil" embodies the hidden sins that we all hide and that in turn distance us from the ones we love most. Reverend Hooper dons a black veil throughout this story, and never takes it off. He has discerned in everyone a dark, hidden self of secret sin. In wearing the veil Hooper dramatizes the isolation that each person experiences when they are chained down by their own sinful deeds. He has realizes that symbolically everyone can be found in the shadow of their own dark veil. Hooper in wearing this shroud across his face is only amplifying the dark side of people and the truth of human existence and nature.
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.
Hawthorne's allegorical approach at real life situations provides his readers with a sense of accomplishment: a sense that if they learn lessons from others, then they will not have to learn from first hand experience. Although on the surface it may seem like another tale of Puritanistic virtue, The Scarlet Letter is the embodiment of life itself. After reading this novel, one may find that many events in real life today can relate directly to events in The Scarlet Letter.