Essay On The Minister's Black Veil

Authors use symbols in their stories to get a deeper theme across to their readers. Symbols can be anything from objects to people, and they can mean one thousand things. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil”, he uses to black veil as a piece of heavy symbolism, which represents shame, mourning, or the open baring of sins.
The black veil in the story could easily be used to represent shame. The first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions shame is hiding. Hiding mistakes, hiding guilt, and hiding their face all come to mind when one thinks of shame. Father Hooper wears the black veil over his face, so that he can see people but people cannot see him. He hides his face and, subsequently, hides his guilt and mistakes from the public. Because of this, many people also suspect he has committed a deplorable crime and assume the veil also means he’s hiding his shame.

The color black has always symbolized mourning.

Widows wear black to mourn their husbands and people wear black to funerals. The black veil could symbolize mourning, but not for a physical death. The veil could symbolize mourning for the death of his innocence. According to the Bible, innocence dies when one commits sin. This could be a way for the sexton to mourn the loss of his purity. This concept actually comes up in a conversation between Hooper and his fiancée. “’If it be a sign of mourning,” replied Hooper, “I, perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a veil.’” (Hawthorne 641). Here, Hooper says that he has dark sins, which have tainted his purity and ‘killed’ his innocence, leaving him with his black veil to mourn his

loss.
The black veil could also mean the baring of sins alongside mourning. All people sin, and all people make mistakes. What’s worse than that though, especially to Nathaniel Hawthorne, was being hypocritical of your sins. Hawthorne didn’t find it fair that so many people could act ‘holier than thou’ but then go off and commit terrible acts of sin. He incorporates it into many of his works. “’Why do you tremble at me alone?" cried he, turning his veiled face round the circle of pale spectators. "Tremble also at each other! Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil? What, but the mystery which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so awful? 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!’” In this quote, Hawthorne has the character of Father Hooper say that all people wear black veils, all people commit sins, and how dare they act like he is the fool when they are nothing but hypocrites. This also uses the veil as a symbol for sins and how everyone sins, but the minster is not ashamed of his sins but instead bares them publically, like a cross.
In the story “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses lots of symbolism. From ribbons to the devil, he uses small things to critic society and to get his point across. In “The Minister’s Black Veil”, the black veil stands for many things. The black veil is used to show shame, mourning, and the baring of sins.