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Nathaniel Hawthorne themes in his writing
What is the allegory in the minister's black veil
The minister's black veil symbolism
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Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” is about Parson Hooper, a Milford minister, and his black veil. One day, he arrives at mass on the Sabbath with a black veil covering his eyes. The townspeople immediately begin to question; some saying their “parson has gone mad,” while others believe he is covering a sin (1312). The Minister, however, disregards his own strange appearance and the shocked and curious whispering of the townspeople. Parson Hooper’s black veil is made of “two folds of crape which entirely concealed his features, except the mouth and chin” (1312). He can see through the veil, but what he sees is darkened, allowing him to see the truth about the others around him, that they are bad people. The people mutter about …show more content…
Hooper’s terribly changed appearance, questioning if it’s really him behind the veil. However, the black veil makes his sermon seem more powerful than his normally calm preaching style. However, the people of his church are shocked and quite superstitious. They wonder if he will ever remove the veil. When Elizabeth, his fiancée, asks Mr. Hooper about the veil, he does not reveal anything. “‘Know, then, this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it ever, both in light and darkness, in solitude and before the gaze of multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my familiar friends’” (1316). Though Elizabeth asks him to let her see his face, he has no plan of ever removing the veil, not even for her. The townspeople see Mr.
Hooper as someone who “‘has changed himself into something awful,’” just by wearing the veil (1312). It is unknown whether he is blocking something out or keeping something to himself. When the people of Milford first see the black veil on the minister’s face, they begin to question and look in disbelief. “‘Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hooper’s intellects,’” says a man (1314). What was strange from this was the effect of the unexpected change, which the black veil “‘throws its influence over [Mr. Hooper’s] whole person, and makes him ghost-like from head to toe’” (1314). It could be that the minister is hiding something. During a funeral for a young lady, he stoops over the coffin, and “the veil hung straight down from his forehead” (1314). If the woman is not dead, and if “her eye-lids had not been closed for ever,” she would have seen the minister’s face (1314). A superstitious woman supposedly sees the coffin shake when this happened, and Mr. Hooper “so hastily caught the black veil” (1314). In addition, other details of the story seem to link him to the death of the young maiden. He conducts her funeral on the very day he first wears the veil, and there is the speculation “‘that the minister and the maiden’s spirits were walking hand in hand’” (1314). However, a superstitious old woman says this, making it hard to believe. Mr. Hooper could have been hiding something from the people, what many though to be a shameful
sin. However, the minister may be blocking something out as well. It could be a sign of religion, somehow protecting him from something outside. He does see darkness from his point of view. When his fiancée Elizabeth asks if he will remove the veil for her, the minister says, “‘know, then, this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it ever’” (1316). The black veil symbolizes a hidden idea, so it may be covering him for protection from others. In his conversation with Elizabeth, the Mr. Hooper implies that all mortals could cover their faces just as he has because all have some secret sin or sorrow. But, he says he will keep the black veil, and not remove it for “‘strangers, so with [his] familiar friends’” (1316). It becomes clear that while the veil may hide some secret sin or crime, it is still unknown. At the end of the story, as he lies dying, Mr. Hooper says that he sees a veil on all the faces of those who are attending his deathbed. In this way, the major theme of the story is developed; that is, it is suggested that everyone wears a black veil-- that everyone has a secret sin or sorrow that is hidden from all others. Everyone could, like Mr. Hooper, cover his face with a black veil. It is a question Hawthorne leaves the reader with: Is the minister hiding or blocking something? He focuses on a human problem that he believes is quite important. The symbolic significance of the black veil lies in the physical and mental barrier that it creates between the minister and his environment, and the guilt that it expresses. More importantly, the wearing of the veil is a confession of guilt. Being a traditional example for the community, the minister thus implies that everyone should do the same. Important themes in relation to this are the problem of sin, and guilt that is admitted openly versus guilt which is hidden.
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
Minister Hooper is a very good man, believes solely in Christ, and throughout the story we come to see how his views on religion reflect his humanity and humility. In “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Minister Hooper dons a black veil that causes an eruption of gossip in his community. The townspeople do not have any clue as to why he is wearing this black veil and see it as scary and devilish. The people in the community believe that Minister Hooper is wearing the veil to cover up a horrible sin. This may not be the case, however, because he may be wearing it as a symbol of his faith.
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
Reverend Hooper's black veil caused alienation from his congregation. The minister did not even move his veil to perform marriages, which the town believed "could portend nothing but evil to the wedding" (Hawthorne 256). This odd piece of clothing caused rumors about the holy man which caused his congregation to doubt his message. The veil "and the mystery behind it, supplied a topic for discussion between acquaintances meeting in the street, and good women gossiping at their open windows" (Hawthorne ...
The story “The Minister’s Black Veil” is symbolic of the hidden sins that we hide and separate ourselves from the ones we love most. In wearing the veil Hooper presents the isolation that everybody experiences when they are chained down by their own sins. He has realized that everybody symbolically can be found in the shadow of their own veil. By Hooper wearing this shroud across his face is only showing the dark side of people and the truth of human existence and nature.
Mr. Hooper in “The Minister’s Black Veil” puts on a veil to symbolize “those sad mysteries which we hid[e] from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them” (Hawthorne 310). From the moment the townsfolk see the black veil they become very frightened and intimidated by Mr. Hooper, the citizens felt that “the black veil seemed to hang down before his heart” (Hawthorne 308). People became very frightened even the “most innocent girl, and the man of hardened breast” (Hawthorne 312) Mr. Hooper puts this crape on as a “symbol of a fearful secret between him and them” and because of this society chastises him and makes him out to be a...
In “The minister’s black veil” The black veil Mr.hooper puts on is to prevent people from spying on his private life. The veil symbolized that human nature is blinded by sins and they way the town treated him after he started wearing the veil shows that there faith is blind they couldn't understand where he was coming from. “ Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him for some great crime too horrible to be entirely concealed, or otherwise than so obscurely intimated. Thus, from beneath the black veil, there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which
Witchcraft and a Black Veil The setting of “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne occurs in Milford, Massachusetts which is less than 60 miles from Salem, a small town famous for putting hundreds of people on trial and sentencing several to death as a result of accusing them of witchcraft. The thematic historical similarities between the Salem Witch Trials and Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” is apparent through the use of gothic imagery, supernatural effects on the funeral and wedding, and hysterical emotion elicit on the townspeople by Mr. Hooper’s veil. The use of gothic imagery is subtly present throughout the tale of Mr. Hooper, a minister who one day begins to hide his face behind a stark black veil.
For example, the main character in “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Mr. Hooper, is the town’s parson who one day, wore a black veil “swathed about his forehead, and hanging down his face, so low as to be shaken by his breath” ("The Minister's Black Veil"). His common friends and neighbors expressed ghastly from his sudden change in appearance such as: an old woman muttered, “he has changed himself into something awful,” and “‘our parson has gone mad’ cried Goodman Gray” ("The Minister's Black Veil"). Additionally, many people were mystified and offended by his persistent presence with the black veil, even at a funeral “when Mr. Hooper came, the first thing that [the guests’] eyes rested on was the same horrible black veil, which added deeper gloom to the funeral” ("The Minister's Black Veil"). Eventually, Hooper became an outcast after refusing to remove the veil for anyone, even his wife, and his life ended alone as “a veiled corpse” ("The Minister's Black
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.
...face, the veil of pretension, appearances, lies, and self-deception. The unconscious desires and guilt are suppressed and cornered away in one's conscious. In short, Mr. Hooper mirrors the true nature of humans around him. Only when the true nature of life and the freedom of truth is observed can the veil be lifted.
416), while it gave Hooper a more intimidating, enigmatic and somewhat inhuman demeanor that isolated him from the community his services were still available for his community. The book even says that it “enabled him to sympathize with all dark affections” (pg. 416) as many people, particularly the ones who were guilty of ‘secret sin’ felt comfortable and/or compelled by Hooper into confessing their sins. The people felt that they could tell him everything they kept secret, because the veil’s “gloom” and foreboding aura gave him the same aura of mystery. The black veil kind of symbolizes a cover-up that humans use every day to hide their real feelings and thoughts, as many people are never truly honest with others and each convey some sort of secret. It appears that the idea in this story is that humans by nature are sinful and are all guilty of some hidden sin that they try to keep in the dark because having sins is not considered human or moral. It’s not a very positive outlook on humans, but the book does seem to convey that idea, as Reverend Hooper himself is a flawed man guilty of secret sin as revealed in the end, making him no different from the rest of the townsfolk who have their own sins that they hide. However, it also shows that humans are hypocritical by nature because they are so flawed as in the end Hooper proved that he did exactly practice what he
By Mr. Hooper being a worshiper of god he should be a representative of god that swears, to tell the truth, and honesty than a lie. Also, Mr. Hooper tells Elizabeth that everyone hides their sin; in a way, by this saying it can be suggested that someone that believes in God should not hide their sin, so what makes Mr. Hooper any less since his a worships of god and is a person. The word “cover” can be used to convey hiding the truth and what is being hidden is a secret sin that will not be exposed to the public. The author states that “ for the symbol beneath the lie, and die! I look around me, and lo! On every visage a black veil!”(lines 454-455) By the same token, the black veil is a symbol of meaning as in lonely, death, hidden, and pain. With the idea to know how the black veil is being used can impact how someone can be hiding something that they have done. When the use of the word “beneath” can suggest that a hidden secret of a sin to not be shown and left seal under anyone's conscience. A black veil is an act of hiding someone's visage that wants to hide a sin. The community that Mr. Hooper lives in they judge Mr. Hooper by him wearing the black veil he has done wrong and that does not prove but Mr. Hooper tells the people around his
Abstract This short story “The Minister’s Black Veil” was rather written quite amazingly. This short story really caught my attention in the aspect that he was hiding something from everyone, whether it was sin, or even if he was hiding his emotions from everyone. Mrs. Saunders put it in english for me, “By concealing his features. Hooper renders those around him less "powerful"— more vulnerable—in their relations with himself.