The Minister’s Black Veil was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The story was published in 1836. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1806 in Salem Massachusetts. He has an ancestor named John Hathorne, which was a judge in the Salem witch trials that was never repented for his actions. Nathaniel changed his last name from Hathorne to Hawthorne to hide his relations. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825. His fiction works were considered part of the dark romanticism. His themes often center on morality, sin, and redemption (Clendenning). The Minister’s Black Veil beings with Parson Hooper, the reverend of Milford, arriving with a black veil covering his face. The people of the town begin to gossip, some say he has gone mad, while The theme to this part of the story is dark romanticism. He shows another them towards the end of his story, which is sin. Puritanism is also shown throughout his story, because it is a huge part of Hawthorne’s background. Self-alienation is also shown, due to Parson Hooper wearing a black veil that causes people to ostracize him. Their entire attitude changes towards him, which causes him to live his life alone. This leads into the symbolism shown in the story. In the sentence, “That piece of crape, to their imagination, seemed to hang down before his heart, the symbol of a fearful secret between him and them,” shows the symbolism of the black veil. It represents the sins Parson Hooper has. He wears the black veil to show he has sins, and he does not hide them like everyone else does in the town. This is why he thinks they are hypocrites, because everyone sins and they just do not show People speculate why he is wearing the black veil. Eventually, people quit talking to him and they quit viewing him as a leader. At one point, Parson Hooper had friends, and now he is going to die alone. 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 sermons. Although, this one was dark, and Mr. Hooper had a gloom temperament. The subject for that sermon was about secret sin. When Mr. Hooper greeted people, they returned with strange and bewildered looks. I think Parson Hooper weakens as he changed his appearance with a black veil. This also causes a negative effect on Milford’s community. Hawthorne shows this towards the end of the story, “Mr. Hooper sadly smiled, at the pale visages of the worldly throng as he passed by.”
In reality the black veil was worn to teach a lesson. The lesson was to show how easily people are judged when unaware of one’s true intentions. This being said, Hooper is explaining how he was judged and his life changed for the worst just because he was wearing the black veil; he was hated for something that his friends and family had no clue about, but believed it was for the
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
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...
Throughout his literary endeavors, Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes symbolism to present a certain theme that pertains to human nature and life. In his works, The Scarlet Letter and "The Minister's Black Veil", Hawthorne uses symbolism to present a common theme pertaining to religion; that though manifested sin will ostracize a person from society, un-confessed sin will destroy the soul.
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
In the Nathaniel Hawthorne tale, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” we see and feel the solitude/isolation of the minister, Reverend Mr. Hooper. Is this solitude not a reflection of the very life of the author?
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
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
Their inability to show Hooper compassion when he refused to explain what the black veil signified led to their human nature and judgemental tendencies taking over. Goodman Gray, a self-proclaimed friend of Mr. Hooper made sure to voice his disdain saying, “Our Parson has gone mad!” The veil truly did reveal the character of the town’s people, by their snickering, fear, and rumors. Besides the townspeople letting their fears take over Parson Hooper’s own fiancée was driven away and let the veil come between her love. At one point she realized the separation the black veil had caused between her and her lover and was described as “fixed insensibly on the black veil, when, like a sudden twilight in the air, its terrors fell around her.” Although she was in love with him she was unable to see past the veil both literally and figuratively and felt his secrets were too monumental. Lastly, on his deathbed, Father Hooper finally explained the veil by bringing their secret sins out into the open. He had been a victim of some of their sins and said, “ Tremble also at each other! Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil?...I look around me and lo!on every visage a Black veil!” When fear and uncertainty take the forefront of a person’s decision making because of what they perceive to be wrong or sinful, it can isolate the victim if deemed by the majority as
At the outset of the tale, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” the sexton is tolling the church bell and simultaneously watching Mr. Hooper’s door, when suddenly he says, ``But what has good Parson Hooper got upon his face?'' The surprise which the sexton displayed is repeated in the astonishment of the onlookers: “With one accord they started, expressing more wonder. . .” The reason is this: “Swathed about his forehead, and hanging down over his face, so low as to be shaken by his breath” is a black veil. The 30 year old, unmarried parson receives a variety of reactions from his congregation:
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.
The same thing happens in “The Minister’s Black Veil,” except the reader does not know exactly what secret sin makes Reverend Hooper begin to don the black veil. Many scholars believe that this has something to do with the funeral of the young lady at the beginning of the story. The opinions range from believing that Reverend Hooper loved the girl in secret, to Poe’s believe that Reverend Hooper may have actually been the cause of the girl’s death (Newman 204). Whatever the reason, the minister’s wearing of the veil taints his view of everyone else around him, making all of them look like they are wearing veils as well (Hawthorne 107).
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