What Are The Truths In The Minister's Black Veil

Some truths can be hard to accept, causing people to react in unreasonable ways. This has been proven many times throughout history, across entire communities of people. The Puritans, for example, who settled in America during the 17th century, were often bound by their strict belief system, causing them to do terrible thing such as the Salem witch trials instead of accepting possible truths different from their own. Incidents like these expose the true values of a society. The 19th-century author Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote stories set in Puritan colonies in order to show his readers what he thought about the assumptions that the Puritans made. In “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses his character, Reverend Hooper, as a device

to reveal the assumptions and moral values of the Puritan community, or any community faced by a truth that is hard to accept.
First, it is significant that Hooper was the town’s parson, because it was in important position in the community, and shows that the Puritans were able to isolate anybody, even the most important people, from their community. It can be inferred from the first scene in the story that Hooper is important to the community, as the narrator describes “The Sexton … pulling busily at the bell-rope. The old people … stooping along the street. Children … tripped merrily alongside their parents, or mimicked a graver gait, in the conscious dignity of their Sunday clothes” (1). These descriptions show everyone in town gathering for the parson to appear, so it must be an important event for them. Hooper was also depicted as a well-respected person in the speech of the townspeople, such as the sexton that pulls the bell rope, who says “What has good parson Hooper got upon his face?”, then later, “Of a certainty it is good Mr. Hooper”, and again, “I can’t really feel as if good Mr.Hooper’s face was behind that piece of crape” (Hawthorne 2-6). Notice how he refers to Hooper as “good Mr. Hooper” to show his respect. However, even then, he is trying to come up with some reason why to dislike Hooper’s veil, just like the rest of the community.
Hooper, after putting on the veil, is immediately isolated from his community in many ways. Even his parishioners, as Bunge puts it, “... no longer welcome the minister at weddings or Sunday dinner. They believe some occasions go more smoothly without a living parable of evil present” (Bunge 19). Bunge suggests that the people, especially the parishioners, isolate Hooper from cheerful occasions because his veil reminds them all that everyone sins, which is not what they want at a celebration. Hooper’s separation from everyone, and his own secretiveness, provides a good way for Hawthorne to keep the veil a mystery until the climax near the end of the story, which is used as an exciting revealing point. As Hawthorne puts it, “...that piece of crape, to their [the townspeople’s] imagination, seemed to hang down before his heart, the symbol of a fearful secret between him and them. Were the veil cast aside, they might speak freely of it, but not till then … But there was one person in the village unappalled by the awe with which the black veil had impressed all beside herself” (Hawthorne 25). This quote puts some plot relevance on Hooper’s isolation, allowing him, rather than answering everyone’s questions all the time, discuss it in dialogue with his fiancee, creating an important scene that helps build up to the climax.
Finally, as Hooper lies on his deathbed, it is revealed what the Puritan community has assumed about him.

Reverend Clark represents the Puritans’ assumptions in this scene, as Boone points out, saying, “That the community comes to believe Hooper is somehow guilty of a dark sin is evidenced by the young Reverend Clark’s ambition to get Mr. Hooper to confess his ‘horrible crime’ before he dies” (Boone 8). Boone believes that the community thought Hooper wore the veil as a symbol for a horrible sin, which can be inferred from Reverend Clark’s mention of one, which he makes even though Hooper never directly said anything of that sort about what the veil means. Hawthorne reveals the flawed values of the Puritan community, writing “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 the lips. Still veiled, they laid him in his coffin, and a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave. The grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial stone is moss-grown and good Mr. Hooper’s face is dust, but awful is still the thought that it mouldered beneath the Black Veil!” (Hawthorne 61). The revelation made about the Puritans is that, although their belief system acknowledges that nobody is without sin, they reacted in shock when their parson represented this belief on himself, and reacted by making him an outcast. If the Puritans were not able to accept the imperfections of others, they certainly could not accept their own. In this way, they are depicted as being arrogant and

hypocrites.
As all of this evidence suggests, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” uses the character of Mr. Hooper to expose the contradictions of the Puritans’ actions with their beliefs. It is written that, when faced with a hard to accept truth which, although hard, was part of the Puritan belief system, the Puritans reacted unreasonably, isolating Hooper and trying not to think about it. Hawthorne is not only sending a message about the Puritans, but a warning for everyone. Similar events to those depicted in “The Minister’s Black Veil” could still happen in today’s society.