The Earth and Its Black Veil Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American author from Salem, Massachusetts. Salem, Massachusetts is one of the first locations where Puritanism was practiced and had a foothold in the area for a long time. Puritanism is a strict offshoot denomination of the Catholic church that is best known for the Salem witch trials. Nathaniel and his family had a history of Puritanism that greatly influenced many of his writings. In one of his better-known short stories, titled “The Minister’s Black Veil” Hawthorne uses a mellow tone and the black veil as a symbol to represent that most people have hidden sin and guilt, which are reoccurring topics throughout Puritanism as well as the hypocrisy of the Puritan church. Nathaniel Hawthorne …show more content…
The veil also makes his sermons far more dark and ominous, which he imposed to try and harp on the idea that sin is wrong, and though most people have hidden sin, that doesn’t make their sins any more justified. Hooper is often hypocritically criticized for his veil, which is strange as true Puritans who truly want to better themselves and their connection with God should not be against Hooper’s analogy and emphasis on sin. This criticism is a clear representation of the hypocrisy of the Puritan church that Hawthorne hoped to critique. Hooper even directly states this while on his deathbed when he says, “When a man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasure the secret of his sin, then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived,”. Hawthorne 13. By doing so, he asks why he is the one being labeled as a monster for representing the sins that others have committed rather than him, and he even refers to his veil as a symbol of sin. Hawthorne does a great job of using the veil to represent hidden sin and, on a deeper level, criticizes the Puritan
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
In the novel The Scarlet Letter and the short story “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Nathaniel Hawthorne incorporates romantic elements, such as beauty, truth, innocence, and sin, in his criticism of Puritan societies. In both texts, Hawthorne argues that all people, even those in strictly religious societies with corrupted standards, are capable of sin. Hawthorne uses symbolism and light and dark imagery to convey his argument.
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...
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...
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).
There is no end to the ambiguity in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil”; this essay hopes to explore this problem within the tale.
Everyone has committed a secret sin, whether it’s big or small. People usually try to hide these things so others wouldn't find out so other people would not judge them by it. The puritans have a society where people judge others based on their appearance. In “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Hawthorne uses the symbolistic meaning of the black veil, and the values of a culture or a society to create a moral about how everyone wears a black veil from a secret sin, and people shouldn’t just judge people by their appearance.
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
For the sake of this study, Luke’s Gospel plays an important role in establishing the identity of the members of the community. Indeed, “without Luke’s Gospel our visual images of the Christian story would be impoverished” because “Luke’s Gospel [can be considered] the aesthetic teacher of Christian senses in hearing and speech through story and song and in sight through the many artistic renderings of his stories.” Luke accomplishes this feat by using cultural conventions surrounding hospitality and banqueting to “illustrate such important facets of Jesus’ teaching as generosity to the poor, forgiveness of sinners, humility rather than social power, and the priority given to the word of God.”
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.
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
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.
Hawthrone also describes the veil as mysterious, which the reader can infer that there is some sort of symbolic meaning behind the veil. Hawthorne uses the veil to symbolize that Mr. Hooper is hiding behind his own sin or shame. Mr. Hooper wants to show his whole town that everyone has their own veil and hides behind sin each day. Shame makes a person fixate on their past behavior, which can be harmful if that behavior was a hidden sin. In Hawthorne's two short stories, "The Minister's Black Veil" and "Young Goodman Brown," Father Hooper and Goodman Brown serve as