Death of the Black Veil
When a town’s Minster changes his looks, who knows what can happen. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “The Minister's Black Veil”, Mr. Hooper, the town’s Minister, shows up to church with a black veil on and everyone questions it and spreads rumors. This ends with his wife leaving and his death. Nathaniel Hawthorne expresses a deep theme of society being judgmental which can be proven with the imagery and the relationship conflicts.
There is no doubt that the imagery, shown in the town’s people spreading rumors, supports the theme of society is destructively judgmental. The people of the town made Mr.Hooper a laughing stalk by making suspicions about the veil. In “The Minister's Black Veil” the judgment of the
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towns people can be seen when Hawthorne writes, “Each member of the congregation, the most innocent girl, and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher had crept upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought” ( Hawthorne 473).
The reader can visualize the image of all these people in the church just whispering and coming up with ideas of why he wears the veil. This imagery shows how even in church these people are just judging the minister, which is horrible because church is supposed to be a judge free place. Being a good Christian, according to the Bible, means not judging and being accepting of others. Not only do they talk badly about him in the church, but they were so judgmental, that when he died he was finally at peace. The narrator states,” While his auditors shrank from one another, in mutual affright, Father Hooper fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse, with a faint smile lingering on his lips. Still veiled they laid him in …show more content…
his coffin, and a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave” (482). These people who made fun of him were so cruel to him he died happy. The reader can clearly see that eerie smile that just hides under the veil. He scares the minister so bad, but all he can do is smile. Not just happy that they were now gone from him, but happy that he stuck with his belief and didn’t lift his veil. While spreading rumors and making fun of him was hard, losing his wife was harder. While imagery is strongly seen in this short story so are relationship conflicts.
Hawthorne uses this is to show how the judgment of others can change the character’s view of them. The most obvious place see in the story is between Mr. Hooper and his fiance Elizabeth, “Beloved and respected as you are, there may be whispers that you hide your face under consciousness of secret sin. For the sake of your holy office, do away with this scandal” (479). This shows Elizabeth getting mad because she wants to protect her husband from the judgment. While this can be seen as true she is also doing it for her own benefit. She doesn’t like being associated with all of the words coming out about this veil. While she feels this way, Mr. Hooper still loves her and can understand her frustration. He still adores her and doesn’t want her to go. Mr. Hooper knows she wants to leave, but he wants to resolve the conflict, “Do not desert me , through this veil over my face, no darkness between us here on earth. Be mine and hereafter there shall be no darkness between our souls!” (479). Though he pours his heart out to her yet she doesn’t care He knows she will not understand, but wants her to know the veil is just a clothing item and that when their in heaven it will be gone. Even after doing this she is still stuck in her ways. Elizabeth states,””Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face,” said she. “Never! It cannot be!” replied Mr. Hooper. “Then farewell!”said Elizabeth.” (479). Though
he tries to explain it to her she still chose to leave. This was caused be the fear of humiliation and feeling judged for her fiance's choices. If these people would not have split the two apart they would have been married and lived happily, but do to one article of clothing their relationship was ripped apart. So what happens to a Minister who wears a black veil? He ends up being left by his wife and having rumors spread about him, but he dies in peace knowing he is doing a great deed by staying true to his beliefs. This can be seen modern society with people judging others by weight, appearance, or athletic ability. Nathaniel Hawthorne truly shows the theme of society being judgmental by his imagery and the relationships through the characters. Through Mr. Hooper’s death, to Elizabeth leaving, and the people of the town spreading rumors society being judgemental is right there. Hawthorne clearly understood how harsh society could be back then and we can see how it hasn’t changed now. It is an unchangeable thing because everyone is always going to have an opinion and it is best for us just to ignore it.
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
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.
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 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
Hawthorne's parable, "The Minister's Black Veil," uses symbols to illustrate the effect of shame and guilt. In the story, Mr. Hooper represents the average Christian with a deep longing to be holy, and have fellowship with man. However he allows the cross that he bears to come between himself and the latter. His secret is represented by the veil he wears. The veil itself is black, the color of both secrecy and sin. Spiritually, the veil embodies the presence of evil in all of mankind. In the physical realm it serves as emotional barrier between himself and everyone else (Timmerman). During his first sermon after donning the veil, it is observed that, "... while he prayed, the veil lay heavily on his uplifted countenance. Did he seek to hide it from the dread Being whom he was addressing?" (par 10). The veil made Mr. Hooper a powerful preacher. But even the people his messages touched the most would shudder when Mr. Hooper would move close to comfort them, his veiled face making them tremble (par 45). His personal relationships all but ceased to exist. Outside of church, he was seen as a bugbear, or monster. (par 44). Seemingly, the only one that did not fear the veil was his loving fiancée, Elizabeth. Elizabeth symbolizes purity. She is innocent and...
Hooper delivers his sermon, which is about how everyone has a secret sin that acts as a barrier between themselves and the others around them, with a black veil covering his face, “each member of the congregation, the most innocent girl, and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher had crept upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought.” (106). The message of his sermon, paired with the veil, causes the townspeople to feel as if Mr. Hooper can see their individual secret sins and expose them to the public, which, in a Puritanical society, makes one vulnerable to public punishment or ostracism by the community. Due to their fears of having their Christian facades shattered and their subsequent sinful natures revealed, the townspeople alienate the minister. This reflects hypocrisy in the sense that their fears come from knowing they are essentially living double lives, which causes more hypocritical behavior to arise in the form of treating their minister in quite the opposite way one should treat a human being, especially one who serves the church in such a high position. Furthermore, on his deathbed, Mr. Hooper points out the townspeople’s hypocrisy when he exclaims, “Why do you tremble at me alone? Tremble also at each other. . . .I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!” (118). Through this exclamation, he is trying to urge the townspeople to reveal their secret sins and stop hiding under a
His lover, Elizabeth, leaves him, because he refuses to take the veil off. The plot to the story is that Parson Hooper tries to overcome the gossiping of the town, and make people accept him. However, his plan backfires and they reject him. “ Mr Hooper had the reputation of a good preacher, but not an energetic one: he strove to win his people heavenward, rather than to drive them thither,” states Hawthorne. The sermon he gives with the black veil on his face, is the same style and manner he gave the last sermon.
Throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne 's literary work, The Minister 's Black Veil, the sensation of the veil, the separation it creates from good things in life, and the persistence of the black veil on earth symbolize sin in mankind. During the whole parable, Mr. Hooper is restrained by the black veil and cannot live a free, enjoyable life. Also, people around him cannot tolerate the overwhelming, dark feeling that the black veil generates. Similarly, sin can take over people’s lives and create a feeling of hopelessness and gloom. Hawthorne’s parable overall demonstrates power and impact of sin on
From the beginning of the story, Mr. Hooper comes out wearing a black veil, which represents sins that he cannot tell to anyone. Swathed about his forehead, and hanging down over his face, Mr. Hooper has on a black veil. Elizabeth urged, “Beloved and respected as you are, there may be whispers that you hid your face under the consciousness of secret sin” (Hawthorne 269). His fiancé says that in the black veil there may be has a consciousness of secret sin. Also, he is a parson in Milford meeting-house and a gentlemanly person, so without the veil, Hooper would be a just typical minister, “guilty of the typical sins of every human, but holier than most” (Boone par.7). He would be a typical minister who is guilty of the typical sins of every human without the black veil. Also, Boone said, “If he confesses his sin, the community can occur” (Boone par.16). If he confesses his sin about the black veil, all of the neighbors will hate him. Last, he said, “so, the veil is a saying: it is constantly signifying, constantly speaking to the people of the possibility of Hooper’s sin” (Boone par.11). Mr. Hooper’s veil says that he is trying to not tell the sins about the black veil. In conclusion, every people have sins that cannot tell to anyone like Mr. Hooper.
"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.
Unlike Hester’s scarlet letter as a method of punishment, the black veil that Mr. Hooper wears is to teach his fellow Christians some lessons. He first wants to teach his community how judgmental humans are. Just by the change of his appearance, the town takes on a very different attitude towards Mr. Hooper. Mr. Hooper, before the wearing of his veil, was a very likeable man in his community. His speeches were often given praise and he was on very amiable terms with his neighbors and townspeople. After Mr. Hooper starts to wear his veil, people do not treat him the same way. Elizabeth, who was happily engaged to him, is undergoing some second thoughts.
...ke the veil off. Here Hawthorne delivers us the message of what we feel and how much we regret when we do hurt to the people that we love, especially with no intention of doing it. Hawthorne indicates the repentance and shame that Mr. Hooper feels about his shameful sin. Thus, the similarities between the unnamed narrator in the story of Poe, and Mr. Hooper is that they both felt regret about their actions and they make some decisions that lead to harming people they love and care about. The minister decides to put a black veil about his sin and the unnamed narrator ends up admitting the assassination of the old man. The similar connotation of both Poe and Hawthorne is that if we harm people that we love without intention or even with purpose, our voice of consciousness will always recall us to that sin and it will eventually lead to insanity or ambiguous behavior.
“Hester to ask, the bitterness of heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor little creature had been born at all”.(Hawthorne 128) Here we see Hester have a sense of regret on having born her child Pearl , because she will very well as her mother be affected by her sin. “Her character had been withered up by this red-hot brand”. (Hawthorne 128) The Scarlet letter had began to have an effect on Hester and how she acted and how she lived every day. Her physical feature had also changed by this A “that her rich and luxuriant hair had either been cut off or was so completely hidden by a cap”. (Hawthorne 128)“ The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance..”,but now Hester had hidden all her woman like features and we see the affect the Scarlet letter had taken upon her and her child. The veil also has an effect on Rev. Hooper on his relations with other people. Adults and children fear the Black Veil and Elizabeth has an affect on Rev. Hooper. During a conversation with Elizabeth, she ask Rev. Hooper to lift the veil so she may see his face he refuses. “She withdrew her arm from his grasp, and slowly departed,pausing at the door,to give one long shuddering gaze, that seemed almost to penetrate the mystery of the black veil”. (Hawthorne 6) The black veil and the Scarlet letter had a most lasting impression on the people. When Rev. Hooper said that he saw a black veil on everybody's