Minister's Black Veil Transcendentalism

While fervently attending church and keeping an eye out for their fellow townspeople, straitlaced Puritans of seventeenth century Massachusetts abode by strict rules pertaining to religion. Puritans studied the bible, wore dark clothes, and were fairly mature for their age. The infamous Salem Witch Trials that occurred there were a series of court trials persecuting innocent people based on groundless accusations of witchcraft. One of the judges who led the trials was John Hathorne, American author Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great great grandfather. Nathaniel Hawthorne was prompted to add a “w” to his last name in an attempt to distance himself away from such ancestral connections. He was horrified from reading first accounts of the events taken

One mean of achieving that is the guilt that drives people to be morally correct. Like mentioned before, the minister in “The Minister’s Black Veil” is driven by guilt to wear the veil, for he too, committed a sin. At the same time, he hopes to make others see their own faults and guilt them into confessing. “Dying sinners cried aloud for Mr. Hooper, and would not yield their breath till he appeared; though ever, as he stooped to whisper consolation, they shuddered at the veiled face so near their own” (Hawthorne 42). In the case of the sinners, they are able to confess and free themselves from the shame that permitted them from doing so before. Goodman Brown in the second short story goes on an obviously wrongful journey, and feels guilty for leaving his wife. All throughout his walk, he feels dirty being with the evil old man and stops to sit by a tree. “The young man sat a few moments by the roadside, applauding himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet the minister in his morning walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his that very night, which was to have been spent so wickedly, but so purely and sweetly now, in the arms of Faith!” (Hawthorne 41). Goodman Brown’s experience is his attempting to walk down the path with the malicious man and making the decision to stop after some time. The self control that stops him in his journey makes him come to terms with himself, which is important in itself. Rather than having Goodman Brown continue, Nathaniel Hawthorne makes him find his moral compass and stop the old man’s influence on him. Once again, Hawthorne’s dark romantic specialty shines through in his perceptions of the more grotesque emotions of guilt and the more darker realities of corruption. He faces contemporary thinking by artfully discussing how some