The Minister's Black Veil: Alienation

“The Minister’s Black Veil” - Alienation

In 1837, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote “The Minister’s Black Veil”, and in doing so he made a new outlook towards people and their way of understanding the outcasts and the aliens of society. To help make his point come across better, Hawthorne wrote a parable, and like all parables including his previous book The Scarlet Letter they tell a story to explain a lesson.In the Minister’s Black Veil Nathaniel Hawthorne uses a parable of sinfulness and secrecy exemplified in the use of the black veil to show the way a community and a person can seperate themselves from each other even when they need each other the most. Hawthorne creates many parables to show the satirical point of view of man and our societies,

These are all remarks of Hooper and his black veil and the start of the alienation where the people start outcasting him because they don't like his veil and are starting to wonder why it's on his face, they want to know what he is hiding. Hawthorne also includes as a small note to perceive this as a parable for secrecy and sin where he talks about the reverend’s subject “The subject had reference to secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness,even forgetting that the omniscient can detect them.” This is ironic due to the fact he has a veil covering his face to show his masked sin, and won’t tell anyone what his sin is and why he wears the

Towards the end of the story, while hooper is dying a reverend named Mr.Clark had asked hooper to reveal his face from under the veil and tell the reason why he had it in the first place, from this Hooper replies “Why do you tremble at me alone? Tremble also at each other! Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled only for my black veil. What,but the mystery which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring on the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which i have lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a black veil!” approaching this statement it seems that Hawthorne wanted the dying reverend to get across his point to show this is a parable. Saying that everyone wears a veil, just why do you persecute and seclude the one who chooses to truly show it, and also says that every sins, so why would someone judge the one who chooses to repent it in public and with