No matter how guilt is handled, it should be accepted. While going to church one day an old woman muttered “‘I don’t like it,’...as she hobbled into the meeting house. ‘He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his face’” (Hawthorne 2). This quote explains that the people were freaked out by the minister wearing the veil. Even though the minister saw the reason behind doing what he did, by wearing the mask, nobody else did. Reverend Hooper’s fiancee Elizabeth asks him to “‘Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face,’ said she. ‘Never! It cannot be!’ replied Mr. Hooper. ‘Then farewell!’ said Elizabeth” (Hawthorne 9). This displays that Elizabeth, the who loves him, is leaving Hooper because she doesn’t accept the fact that he is wearing a veil to show his guilt and sin. While laying on his deathbed Reverend Clark says to Hooper, “‘Before the veil of eternity be lifted, let me cast aside this …show more content…
When Hooper walked through the community, the author says, “Thus, from beneath the black veil, there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him” (Hawthorn 10). It shows that the veil represents sin and that it brings sadness to people with sin. When Hooper is talking to his fiancee “Be mine, and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no darkness between our souls! It is but a mortal veil--it is not for eternity!” (Hawthorn 9). This shows that the sin stays with him for all of his life, and even though he has made the realization that he sinned, the sin still follows him. On Hooper’s deathbed, he said, “...then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and die!” (Hawthorne 13). This illustrates the veil, that represented sin, could not be removed before his death because he originally claimed he was never going to take it off. Also that even though Hooper is dying he still has
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” 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
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...
...e parable “Minister’s Black Veil” written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, symbols were often used to represent many themes that are still relevant in society and religion now. Hidden sin, guilt, and the shame attached to sin in Puritan beliefs are amongst some of the themes symbolized in the story. Known for playing with the dark side of human nature, in this parable, Hawthorne writes in an intentionally ambivalent tone that leaves endless speculation of Hooper’s actions. This parable is important to today’s life because it teaches the readers to not shudder away from darkness and sin that we often pretend do not exist. It also emphasizes that, in death, everything that is owned and use to cover up transgressions will be stripped and all pretense will be no longer. The themes represented in “Minister’s Black Veil” are timeless and will always be a big problem in society.
Hooper was an all-round good minister, the type people looked up to and “had a reputation of a good preacher, but not an energetic one: he strove to win his people heavenward by mild, persuasive influences rather than thither by the thunders of the Word” (Monteiro 2). The morning he decided to wear the veil, the towns people believed there was a change in his behavior. “But there was something…it was tinged, rather more darkly than usual, with the gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper’s temperament” (Monteiro 2). His fiancé leaves the engagement, leaving him to become emotionally and physically insane. At the end of the story, he is on his death bed where he reveals the veils
In the short story, The Minister’s Black Veil, the minister is seen wearing a black veil upon his face which is quite odd for a person of faith to do. The veil in the story can carry many themes, such as hiding sin, being ashamed, or just being scared. The most apparent theme is how someone, even of faith, can still sin and feels the need to hide it. The veil is obviously meant to hide something from the people and maybe even from the minister himself. Reverend Hooper gives a sermon about how people often forget that God sees everything, that he is always watching over us so that it is foolish to hide our sins.
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.
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
Hooper delivers his sermon, which is about how everyone has a secret sin that acts as a barrier between themselves and the others around them, with a black veil covering his face, “each member of the congregation, the most innocent girl, and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher had crept upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought.” (106). The message of his sermon, paired with the veil, causes the townspeople to feel as if Mr. Hooper can see their individual secret sins and expose them to the public, which, in a Puritanical society, makes one vulnerable to public punishment or ostracism by the community. Due to their fears of having their Christian facades shattered and their subsequent sinful natures revealed, the townspeople alienate the minister. This reflects hypocrisy in the sense that their fears come from knowing they are essentially living double lives, which causes more hypocritical behavior to arise in the form of treating their minister in quite the opposite way one should treat a human being, especially one who serves the church in such a high position. Furthermore, on his deathbed, Mr. Hooper points out the townspeople’s hypocrisy when he exclaims, “Why do you tremble at me alone? Tremble also at each other. . . .I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!” (118). Through this exclamation, he is trying to urge the townspeople to reveal their secret sins and stop hiding under a
Mr. Hooper’s veil is very sentimental to him. His veil is looked at in different ways, it can symbolize the confession of his sins or a way to hide his sins. Mr. Hooper showed honesty toward his veil. He didn’t take it off even when people tempted him to take it off, specifically when his soon to be wife debated with him to take the veil off who was pretty much the only person who had the courage to go up and talk to him about the veil, he then rebuttled and told her he can not take it off. People around were thinking he was hiding secret sin, but we really don’t know why Mr. Hooper wore that veil, but for whatever the reason was, Mr.Hooper was being honest in whatever the reason was he wore that veil, to either show he is confessing his sins and showing that he is a sinner or a symbolic way to show that we are all sinners and we all have masks but the only difference is that his veil is
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