Most people define a symbol as something, such as an object or an action, utilized in a literary work to represent something else with the belief that the symbol can represent one thing and one thing only. This defines an allegory, a much more obscure literary device, meanwhile a symbol has the exact same function of an allegory except it has the capability to represent many different things instead of just one. This adjusted definition of a symbol now gives symbols much more versatility and allows many more possibilities as to what a symbol could represent. In his short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Nathaniel Hawthorne exploits the black veil to symbolize omnipresent sin everyone possesses and the isolation public wrongdoing brings in …show more content…
order to portray the themes that sin never goes away even if God forgives a person for their transgressions and the hypocritical nature of acting sanctimonious over others due to their transgression, respectively. Nathaniel Hawthorne develops one theme in this work by employing the black veil as a symbol of ubiquitous wrongdoing and going on to reveal that everyone acquires ubiquitous sin eventually.
Hawthorne first clarifies the meaning of the black veil by outright stating “this veil is a type and a symbol,” and goes on to say that Mr. Hooper “[is] bound to wear [the black veil] ever” and “no mortal eye will see [the black veil] withdrawn” (641). With these few lines, Hawthorne already reveals the symbolic nature of the black veil, more specifically as a type or an object that symbolically embodies or reveals a religious idea, which supports the idea that the black veil physically represents sin. Furthermore, by stating that Mr. Hooper must adorn the black veil forever so that no one, or at least no mortals, will see him without it on, Hawthorne implies that once someone puts on the black veil, or transgresses, it will never go away and that person must live …show more content…
with that transgression until they die, making the sin ever-present. As for everyone obtaining this omnipresent wrongdoing, Hawthorne states through the dying words of Mr. Hooper that he sees “on every visage a black veil” (644). This statement cuts straight to the point Hawthorne wants to make, that everyone sins. Finally, Hawthorne creates the theme that misdeeds always stay with a person despite God’s forgiveness through the symbol of the black veil representing ever-present transgression. Hawthorne makes it abundantly clear throughout the short story that no one can remove the black veil on earth, even a minster like Mr. Hooper who has undoubtedly repented for his misdeeds and God has forgiven them, which shows that everyone lives with their transgressions until the day they die, since everyone sins. Hawthorne also molds another theme throughout his work by utilizing the black veil as a symbol, however this time the black veil represents something else. The symbol of the black veil developed by Nathaniel Hawthorne also represents the seclusion public sin carries with it to demonstrate hypocritical character of acting self-righteous over someone else because of their wrongdoing, especially since everyone transgresses.
Hawthorne demonstrates the severity of isolation caused by just the physical black veil alone when he writes that “only a material emblem” (642) keeps Mr. Hooper from happiness and that the black veil separates Mr. Hooper “from cheerful brotherhood and woman’s love” (643). In revealing how people treat Mr. Hooper simply for wearing a black veil, Hawthorne gives the audience a small taste of how isolated Mr. Hooper feels. However, if people treat him like this for not even transgressing, then one can only imagine how much worse they would treat someone who did commit a sin that everyone knew about. Additionally, Hawthorne begins to hint at the hypocrisy when Mr. Hooper inquires “Why do you tremble at me alone?” and then exclaims “Tremble also at each other!” (644). In this quote Hawthorne employs Mr. Hooper to project the theme almost directly, since Mr. Hooper tells those present that everyone wears a black veil, not just him, and that if they fear him, then they should fear everyone. At last, Hawthorne exploits the black veil as a symbol of isolation caused by wrongdoing in combination with the fact that everyone transgresses in order to display the hypocrisy in acting sanctimonious over others due to their
more public transgression. Throughout “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Hawthorne continually expresses the loneliness and separation that comes with wearing the black veil, or openly showing wrongdoing, despite the fact that everyone sins, which reveals the amazing amount of hypocrisy in everyone who acts self-righteous and shuns the person with open sin. Hawthorne develops various themes in his work through the numerous ways he exploits the black veil as a symbol. In other words, Nathaniel Hawthorne employs the black veil as a symbol of ubiquitous sin everyone obtains to portray the theme that everyone must live with their transgressions until they die as well as a symbol of seclusion brought by public wrongdoing to demonstrate the hypocritical nature of acting sanctimonious while simultaneously shunning those who openly accept their misdeeds as a theme in his short story “The Minister’s Black Veil.” Even Mr. Hooper, a minister who has certainly atoned for his transgressions and gotten God to forgive him for his wrongdoings, cannot make his sins disappear, and since everyone transgresses, no one can live their life without their misdeeds. Hawthorne reveals the remarkable extent of hypocrisy in people who act self-righteous over others with more open wrongdoings through repeatedly conveying the isolation that accompanies adorning the black veil, or publicly showing sin, in spite of the fact that everyone transgresses.
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
In “The Minister’s Black Veil,” for example, Hawthorne describes how, “perhaps the palefaced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister, as his black veil to them”(2). This directly contrasts the “light” faces of the members of the congregation with the darkness of the minister’s veil. By stating that the minister was just as afraid of the people as the people were of him, Hawthorne indicates that the people fear the minister due to the abrupt reveal of his mysterious sin, but the minister also somewhat fears the people and the secrets they hold deep within their hearts. The people of the town are supposedly pure and innocent, yet it is clear that many of the citizens carry the burden of their own evils. Although the minister boldly comes forward with his own sin, he still feels the pain of the loneliness, scorn, and spite that has come with his statement. Hawthorne represents the discomfort the guilty townspeople feel when in the presence of Mr. Hooper when he describes how they were, “conscious of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil” (3). Once again, this use of light and dark imagery supports Hawthorne’s argument that people, even those who claim to be pure and innocent, are capable of sin. The townspeople in Mr. Hooper’s community feel the burden of their own sins when they come in
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...
...t to acknowledge that fact than to live your life a lie. By keeping sin secret from the world like Dimmesdale, your conscience eats at your spirit until you are no longer able to live a healthy, normal life. Hooper's demeanor and sermons scared everyone into seeing their own sins and when looking at his black veil, they saw their own faults, which petrified them for they knew they were pretending to be one of the elect, and that none of them could be perfectly sinless. The horror and the hate people felt towards both the black veil and the scarlet letter was an outward manifestation of the horror and hate they all had for their own sins. Thus it brings us back to the theme that Hawthorne makes so clear in both the Scarlet Letter and "The Minister's Black Veil," that though manifested sin will ostracize a person from society, un-confessed sin will destroy the soul.
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
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
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.
In his various works, Nathaniel Hawthorne addresses the religious themes dominant in colonial Puritan society. For example, the beloved Mr. Hooper of Hawthorne’s parable The Minister’s Black Veil dons a black veil, a mysterious change which the Puritans believed “could portend nothing but evil” (Hawthorne 630). As a result, the Puritans isolate their minister. Even though the parable does show the Puritans’ harsh and superstitious reaction to the vagary of the minister, the veil itself symbolizes both the minister’s isolation from society and his connection to society through original sin. This veil and other symbols in Hawthorne’s works illustrate the universal truth that “all art is a paradox.”
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Hawthorne portrayed a Puritan minister as a man not naïve enough to believe that he could not escape sin or secret sin. Good Mr. Hooper, as he was called, spent his entire adult life trying to prove a point that was only figured out in the end. Throughout the story good Mr. Hooper was treated as though he was a threat revealing to the people that they too, hid behind masks. Hawthorne tried to get the point across that no person could escape secret sin and that all people hid behind masks.
An analysis of the reading reveals that Hawthorne presents human nature as obsessive. The story tells of a respected Puritan minister, Mr. Hooper, who decides to wear a black veil over his face. He refuses to tell his congregants his reasons for wearing the veil, and he never removes the garment. His congregants and his fiancée, Elizabeth, become fixated upon the mask and what he might be hiding underneath it. The congregants proceed to alienate Mr. Hooper. Later, Elizabeth breaks off her engagement with the minister and leaves him after he denied her request to remove his black veil. As she is about to abandon him, he says, “It is but a mortal veil – it is not for eternity! Oh! You know not how lonely I am, and how frightened to be alone behind my black veil. Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity forever!” (22). In other words, Mr. Hooper entreats Elizabeth to stay with him and tells her how he is suffering from the alienation that his former congregants forced upon him. The words “lonely,” “frightened,” and “miserable” all work to convey the depression, fear, and anguish that he felt since his ex-congregants shunned him. The phrase “mortal veil” is a metaphor that compares the veil to a human, a being who is also known as a “mortal.” It implies that, like a human, the veil is impermanent, making it a minor object that doesn’t have much importance in “eternity,” a word that emphasizes the vastness of time. This shows that the congregants and Elizabeth caused Mr. Hooper to suffer by obsessing over an insignificant object, his black veil. Thus, Hawthorne supports his claim that human nature is obsessive and that obsession creates tragedy and suffering. A book that shares Hawthorne’s view on human nature is Song of Solomon by Toni
Another meaning of the black veil can be an acknowledgment of how he recognizes secret sin and instead of everyone else hiding and judging him, he is the one who chooses to represent the injustices that humanity commits and is immediately separated from everyone. It also can be an understanding of seeing everything through a dark veil or seeing the black veil as truth distorted and a symbol of pride and deliberate self-isolation. The ambiguous veil is used as a catalyst by which other moral and perceptual values are examined. Since Mr.Hooper attitude is dramatic the removal of the veil can encapsulate the reader by simple curiosity,personal uneasiness and the appeal to a sense of clerical property, the assumption of a horrible crime. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses a lot of references to the bible for example when he calls the people auditors only implies that they remain spiritually blind despite Mr.Hoopers renewal of religious symbology and the informing scripture here is perhaps the parables of sowers after which Jesus says " Who
He was trying to prove a point that everyone is very judgmental and cruel. Nobody in the town asked why Mr. Hooper had the veil on, they all had just assumed. And that was Hawthorne’s message that everyone was judgmental and cruel. This quote supports my claim because of the fact that it was one of the consequences Mr. Hooper had to face in wearing the veil. Because of Mr. Hooper wearing the veil, he had the entire town talking and speaking and about him. It did worry people because of him wearing it but you can tell in the story that wasn’t his intentions. Everyone just started with rumors and went along with
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
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." - Maya Angelou. In the "Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne's character, Mr. Hooper, has a personal sin that warrants his action of wearing the terrible black veil. I believe this because of two reasons; he had an affair with the young women who passed away, and he wanted to show that even men of God sin. Others believe that Mr. Hooper hid his face because of his sin of vanity which is not the case and here's why.