In The Minister’s Black Veil, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rev. Hooper takes a risk by wearing a black veil over his face. He is judged by his community for doing this. He shows the community that it’s okay to sin because God can forgive you. Rev. Hooper sacrifices his reputation as a preacher by wearing this veil over his face, this highlights that Hooper is a brave character that is trying to send a message. Initially, Rev. Hooper is displayed as a mysterious character. He is seen as a mysterious character because of the black veil he wears over his face. In the very beginning of the story Rev. Hooper walks in to the church wearing a black veil. One of the people in the congregation says this about Rev. Hooper “ Our parson has gone mad!” ( Hawthorne 27). Rev. Hooper displays that he is very brave, and trying to send a message by not explaining why he is wearing the veil. He doesn’t care what the people of the community think of him. This also puts his reputation as a preacher on the line. This is one of many ways that Rev. Hooper displays his brave character. …show more content…
In the critical essay “ The Minister’s black Veil’ and Hawthorne’s Ethical Refusal of Reciprocity: A Levinasian Parable” N.S. Boone explains what people think of Hawthorne’s character. Boone also adds that Rev. Hooper is a very suspicious character because he wears the black veil over his face ( Boone 34). This highlights that Rev. Hooper is a very brave character in the story. He is brave because he isn’t afraid to be judged, or put his reputation in jeopardy by wearing the black veil. This suggests that Rev. Hooper is also trying to send a message by wearing the black veil. This is one way Rev. Hooper’s character is highlighted in 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
Minister Hooper is a very good man, believes solely in Christ, and throughout the story we come to see how his views on religion reflect his humanity and humility. In “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Minister Hooper dons a black veil that causes an eruption of gossip in his community. The townspeople do not have any clue as to why he is wearing this black veil and see it as scary and devilish. The people in the community believe that Minister Hooper is wearing the veil to cover up a horrible sin. This may not be the case, however, because he may be wearing it as a symbol of his faith.
In “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Parson Hooper wears the veil as a visible symbol of sin. It could be interpreted as a representation of his own sins or as a reflection of the sins of the people of the town. Although Parson Hooper tried to teach the people of their sinful nature the town failed to understand the meaning behind the veil and were only concerned with the reason for wearing the veil. They would gossip about him and “talked of little else than Parson Hooper’s black veil,” (Hawthorne “The Minister’s Black Veil” 1315) and they would make up rumors regarding the veil, or that “‘Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hooper's intellects,’” (Hawthorne “The Minister’s Black Veil” 1314). In the end, he lived a life Hooper lived a life shunned while trying to show to the people the nature of their unavoidable sins and how they should accept their own sins to ask for repentance for their wrong
In “The Minister’s Black Veil” Mr. Hooper shocks his townspeople by putting a veil permanently on his face. The veil is a paradox of concealment and revelation (Carnochan 186). Although it is concealing Mr. Hooper’s face, it is made to reveal the sins in society. The townspeople first believed that the veil was being used to hide a sin that Mr. Hooper had committed. Mr. Hooper says that the veil is supposed to be a symbol of sins in general, however the townspeople ignore the message and still focus on his sinfulness. The townspeople know that they have sinned, but they use Mr. Hooper as their own “veil” to hide their sins. Because the townspeople are so caught up on his sins, they fail to figure on the message behind Mr. Hooper’s action and
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...
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 sermon.
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...
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Minister’s Black Veil: A Parable in 1836. Hawthorne was a man known for his grim view of life and society, and this point of view frequently colored his work as an author. His inspiration for this short tale about a minister who dons a black veil over his eyes and nose until his death may have been inspired by a real event. A clergyman named Joseph Moody, of York, Maine accidentally killed a friend as a young man and wore a veil over his face until his own death. There are many theories as to what message Hawthorne was attempting to convey in this story. Some think the main theme is secret sin, with the veil being used literally in order to reach out to his followers. Others, like Edgar Allan Poe, believe the veil was used to symbolize guilt over a terrible crime. While the veil is without a doubt symbolic, one is also drawn to believe in its use as a tool to symbolize isolation; however, secret sin and guilt are also underlying themes.
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
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
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.
Reverend Hooper's black veil caused alienation from his congregation. The minister did not even move his veil to perform marriages, which the town believed "could portend nothing but evil to the wedding" (Hawthorne 256). This odd piece of clothing caused rumors about the holy man which caused his congregation to doubt his message. The veil "and the mystery behind it, supplied a topic for discussion between acquaintances meeting in the street, and good women gossiping at their open windows" (Hawthorne ...
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
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.