Essay On The Minister's Black Veil

Authors use symbols in their stories to get a deeper theme across to their readers. Symbols can be anything from objects to people, and they can mean one thousand things. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil”, he uses to black veil as a piece of heavy symbolism, which represents shame, mourning, or the open baring of sins. The black veil in the story could easily be used to represent shame. The first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions shame is hiding. Hiding mistakes, hiding guilt, and hiding their face all come to mind when one thinks of shame. Father Hooper wears the black veil over his face, so that he can see people but people cannot see him. He hides his face and, subsequently, hides his guilt and mistakes from the public. Because of this, many people also suspect he has committed a deplorable crime and assume the veil also means he’s hiding his shame.

Widows wear black to mourn their husbands and people wear black to funerals. The black veil could symbolize mourning, but not for a physical death. The veil could symbolize mourning for the death of his innocence. According to the Bible, innocence dies when one commits sin. This could be a way for the sexton to mourn the loss of his purity. This concept actually comes up in a conversation between Hooper and his fiancée. “’If it be a sign of mourning,” replied Hooper, “I, perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a veil.’” (Hawthorne 641). Here, Hooper says that he has dark sins, which have tainted his purity and ‘killed’ his innocence, leaving him with his black veil to mourn his