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The symbolism in the story of NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The symbolism of NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The symbolism in the story of NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
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Everyone is evil from the minute they are born. The world is a lie and people lie to themselves to avoid issues they don’t want to face. However, for how long can you avoid your own dark secrets without it haunting you everyday, making you feel guilty? How do you differentiate between which is good and which is evil? Everyone has their own way of dealing with their sins. Even if it’s not addressed to others, eventually the time for judgment will come where all of our secrets will be presented right before us “for the Earth, too, had on her Black Veil.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story teller, is famous for his stories which have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. In “The Minister’s Black Veil” this
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However, you would expect Hawthorne to finally reveal who Mr.Hooper was beneath the black veil during the time of Mr.Hooper's death but we were given something better. A hint of not who Mr.Hooper is but a hint of the human nature. We all carry secrets that “we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness” (2). No matter how hard we try to forget about it and move on with our lives, it will always comes back and haunt us simply for the reason that it is a part of us whether we like it or not. Mr.Hooper addresses this issue in the beginning of the story as well as in the end. When Elizabeth was trying to convince her husband to lift the veil and he refused, she simply asked, “What grievous affliction hath befallen you… that you should thus darken your eyes forever?” (5) Mr.Hooper replied “If it be a sign of mourning… I, perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrow dark enough to be typified by a black veil” (5). During this argument, what Elizabeth failed to understand is she, too, has dark sorrows but while she keeps it hidden to herself, Mr.Hooper physically shows
In the short story “The Minister’s Black Veil”, fear of the unknown is used by the main character, Mr. Hooper, to draw attention to what he believed was a necessary in order to achieve salvation. He believed people should be honest and forward with God, and should avoid wearing a “veil” to hide their true faces when speaking with God. He wore the veil to symbolize the indirectness most people use to cover themselves when speaking to God. Hooper refused to remove his veil, saying he would cast aside his veil once everyone else did, Unfortunately, Hooper never explained why he choose to wear his veil, which led to an uproar of confusion in the community. The community members looked for a simple explanation for his actions. For instance, some believed he had relations with a young girl who recently died, and he was in mourning, or committed a sin so severe he refused to show his face. The community began to avoid Hooper and fear the Reverend they once respected, just because of his one unexplained action. The community began to fear him in such a way that he losses almost all the respect he held within the community, and dies without his betrothed by his side. Even upon his deathbed he refuses to share, with the community, why he chose to wear his veil. Hawthorne reveals in this short story how people crave an explanation for the abnormal, and when they fail to find a satisfactory answer, they will reject and fear the
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...
He realizes that symbolically everyone can be found in the shadow of their own dark veil. Hooper in wearing this shroud across his face is only amplifying the dark side of people and the truth of human existence and nature. Hooper has come to the realization that secret sin is a veil that can never be lifted from anyone's life until the day of their death, and so he wears the dark cloth on for many years. "There is an hour to come, when all of us shall cast aside our veils. " Take it not amiss, beloved friend, if I wear this piece of crepe till then."
The corruption of hidden sin and guilt is exemplified by the late Gilbert Parker who once said, “In all secrets there is a kind of guilt… Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the mortal mind.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of America’s major authors, often wrote about the harsh realities of human existence such as sin, redemption, and morality. In “Minister’s Black Veil,” the main character, Reverend Hooper, wears a veil over his face during his sermons. Though his sermons are very powerful, a feeling of fear and mystery is evoked in the congregation and often in everyday life due to the strange veil that he refuses to remove. On his deathbed, miraculously, Hooper still has enough strength to resist his veil being lifted; his eyes forever covered, he dies with the veil. Hawthorne uses symbols of the black veil to portray hidden sin, guilt, and peculiar shame attaching to sin in Puritan beliefs.
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
"The Minister's Black Veil" is an allegorical narrative in which the agents of setting, symbols, characters, and actions come in a coherent way to represent non-literal and metaphorical meanings about the human character. The black veil is without doubt the most important symbol used in the story. It comes to represent the darkness and duality of human nature, adding thereby a certain undeniable psychoanalytical angle to the short story. The black veil represents the sin that all men carry secretively within their heart as M...
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
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
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
Their inability to show Hooper compassion when he refused to explain what the black veil signified led to their human nature and judgemental tendencies taking over. Goodman Gray, a self-proclaimed friend of Mr. Hooper made sure to voice his disdain saying, “Our Parson has gone mad!” The veil truly did reveal the character of the town’s people, by their snickering, fear, and rumors. Besides the townspeople letting their fears take over Parson Hooper’s own fiancée was driven away and let the veil come between her love. At one point she realized the separation the black veil had caused between her and her lover and was described as “fixed insensibly on the black veil, when, like a sudden twilight in the air, its terrors fell around her.” Although she was in love with him she was unable to see past the veil both literally and figuratively and felt his secrets were too monumental. Lastly, on his deathbed, Father Hooper finally explained the veil by bringing their secret sins out into the open. He had been a victim of some of their sins and said, “ Tremble also at each other! Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil?...I look around me and lo!on every visage a Black veil!” When fear and uncertainty take the forefront of a person’s decision making because of what they perceive to be wrong or sinful, it can isolate the victim if deemed by the majority as
Hooper’s black veil also creates separation between him and happiness. “All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world: it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman’s love, and kept him in that saddest of all prisons his own heart; and still it lay upon his face, as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber, and shade him from the sunshine of eternity” (Hawthorne 417). He can never receive sympathy or have conversations with people because they are always perplexed by the veil. Children in the town run from him because of his appearance. Even his wife, Elizabeth, leaves him because she does not understand the meaning of the black veil and she cannot bear to look at it for the rest of her life. The separation that the veil causes between Mr. Hooper and happiness symbolizes how sin can easily separate people from good things in life. Just like the black veil, some sins can even destroy relationships or a person’s dreams. Sin can overall control an individual’s happiness like the veil did to Mr.
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.
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