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The Minister's Black Veil
Why is the kid wearing suspenders and thick glasses the obvious target for a bully? The answer lies within the human mind, coming from our ancestors, who were hunters of meat. It is human nature to judge a book by its cover, the same way Father Hooper is judged for wearing his black veil. Although Mr. Hooper may not have intended too, his simple act frightens many, and he becomes what they claim he is.
At first sight, his parish is full of wonder. Things like "Are you sure that is our Parson?" are said. Immediately insecurity grips the congregation, and somebody says, "I don't like it." Finally, there is the aspect of fear when a man states, "Our parson has gone mad." In the course of a minute, Father Hooper manages to completely change the tone of the community by wearing a simple black veil over his face.
The general feeling in the community becomes fear and worry. They do not understand or know why Father Hooper covers his face. All they know is that they do not like it and then they leave the rest to their imaginations. Their gossip portrays Father Hooper as a demon of sorts, and people allude to the fact that he has some big dark secret with which he hides behind the veil.
Their ignorance even spreads to his wife. She asks him all sorts of questions about the "horrid" veil. Getting cryptic answers, she leaves him. The act of her leaving seems to represent his departure from humanity. Nobody talks to him the same way, and he even gets such a strong reputation outside of the community, that many outsiders come to his sermons.
Oddly, nobody seems to sympathize with him, but Mr. Hooper does not seem to want sympathy. A few times people ask what the significance of the veil is, but they are met with cryptic answers as well. Not one person in the town tries to council Father Hooper, which indicates they are genuinely afraid, or they enjoy commotion caused by his act. This makes Father Hooper even more reclusive, which in turn makes him look as if he is plotting or hiding something. This viscous cycle continues to his death.
Father Hooper becomes a man that children run from and the people shun.
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...
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
He knows that everyone else should be wearing a black veil because they are all hiding their secret sin as well. Mr. Hooper feels that his secret sin is a very evil thing and he doesn't want anyone else to know about it. The people in his congregation don't understand why he has to cover his face like that and they treat him a lot differently now just because he has the veil over his face. Mr. Hooper doesn't understand why his people would treat him any differently because he hasn't changed at all as a person, he has just changed his appearance somewhat and people shouldn't judge one another on their appearance, they should be judged on their inward qualities. Mr. Hooper feels that he is doing what is good by shielding the world of his sin and part of the problem his congregation has is that they too have a secret sin and they don't want to own up to the fact that they do and admit it.
Father Hooper wears a black veil over his eyes and nose, never revealing the reason of the veil to a soul. At times the sexton would insinuate a reason behind the veil but never revealing the answer to the mystery. Father Hooper is a very imaginative and creative individual to innovate the idea of wearing a black veil to express an idea. He is angry towards the response of the veil to his parishioners, since they treated him differently with the veil compared to without it. Most of the parishioners are clueless to why he wears it and some try to imagine why he would ever want to wear it, but there are only ideas and arguments to why a minister would wear it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil" illustrates the dangers of secret sin. Allowing guilt from things done in the past, things that cannot be changed, can ruin lives. The life of the secret-carrier will be devastated, along with the lives of that person's most loved ones. Hawthorne uses various types of figurative language in his works to portray his message. "The Minister's Black Veil” is no exception; Hawthorne uses symbolism and suggestion to add depth and mystery.
People speculate why he is wearing the black veil. Eventually, people quit talking to him and they quit viewing him as a leader. At one point, Parson Hooper had friends, and now he is going to die alone. 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.
During the last scene of the story, Mr. Hooper is laying in his death bed with the minister of Westbury, Elizabeth and a handful of others by his side. The minister of Westbury attempts to convince Mr. Hooper to take off his veil. Mr. Hooper refuses, shouting, “Never...On earth never!” (7). The minister exclaims, “With what horrible crime are you passing judgment”, which causes Mr. Hooper to let out how he is feeling about the village (7). He was disgusted that they were so concerned with his veil that they started to avoid him. From this death scene, the reader begins to notice all of the tragic consequences which were caused from the village’s assumptions about Mr. Hooper.
{NEED A TOPIC SENTENCE} The very beginning of the story is a portrait of a happy everyday life in Milford - merry children are willing to make fun of a graver's gait, spruce bachelors are looking sidelong at the pretty maidens and a sexton is tolling the bell - and its light-hearted mood contrasts with that of the rest of the story. It gives us a taste of what the parson's life was like before his decision to wear his black veil.When Mr. Hooper appears wearing a black veil “[s]wathed about his forehead, and hanging down over his face, so low as to be shaken by his breath” (1) a period of alienation starts in his life. This event is not expected since Mr. Hooper is “a gentlemanly person” (1) and has the reputation of a “of a good preacher, but not an energetic one: he strove to win his people heavenward by mild, persuasive influences, rather than to drive them thither by the thunders of the Word” (2). The veil itself, Hawthorne tells us, consists of two folds of crape which entirely conceal Mr. Hooper's features, "except the mouth and chin, but probably did not intercept his sight, further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things"(1). E. Earle Stibitz explains how Mr. Hopper’s is shown as an “essentially weak man, poorly prepared by his unmarried solitude, his somewhat morbid temperament, and his professional position to deal in a stable way with an absorbing religious idea that harmonizes with his personal and vocational prejudices(188).
The veil upsets the minister's friends and neighbors deeply, and it becomes a wall between himself and his congregation. The first response is one of curiosity, which quickly turns to suspicion. Nobody can understand his motives for the donning of the black veil, and peopl...
Parson Hooper, the Reverend in The Minister’s Black Veil, is the cause of the internal and external conflicts that arose in this story. Complications in the town, as well as disputes with his relationship, derived instantly after his enrobing of the black veil. For example, the single veil that lay upon the Reverend’s face, disrupted the whole town, “At the close of the services the people hurried out with indecorous confusion, eager to communicate their pent-up amazement, and conscious of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil” (Hawthorne,1042). As Hooper dealt with the backlash of the town and his fiancé, Elizabeth, leaving him, Hawthorne also used symbolism to show the conflicts Hooper was dealing with internally. Hooper revealed to Elizabeth, “I perhaps, like other mortals, have sorrows enough to be typified by a black veil” (Hawthorne, 1045). Which led me to infer that Hooper is dealing with the sin of adultery, being the first day the veil was worn, was at the funeral of a lady who passed away, as well as the reasoning behind the veil being kept from his finance. “This dismal shade must separate me from the world; even you, Elizabeth, can never come behind it” (Hawthorne 1045). Displaying Hooper’s reasoning behind wearing the veil, it also introduces us to the overall, deeper message of what the veil truly sym...
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
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
...t to acknowledge that fact than to live your life a lie. By keeping sin secret from the world like Dimmesdale, your conscience eats at your spirit until you are no longer able to live a healthy, normal life. Hooper's demeanor and sermons scared everyone into seeing their own sins and when looking at his black veil, they saw their own faults, which petrified them for they knew they were pretending to be one of the elect, and that none of them could be perfectly sinless. The horror and the hate people felt towards both the black veil and the scarlet letter was an outward manifestation of the horror and hate they all had for their own sins. Thus it brings us back to the theme that Hawthorne makes so clear in both the Scarlet Letter and "The Minister's Black Veil," that though manifested sin will ostracize a person from society, un-confessed sin will destroy the soul.
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
From the beginning of the story, Mr. Hooper comes out wearing a black veil, which represents sins that he cannot tell to anyone. Swathed about his forehead, and hanging down over his face, Mr. Hooper has on a black veil. Elizabeth urged, “Beloved and respected as you are, there may be whispers that you hid your face under the consciousness of secret sin” (Hawthorne 269). His fiancé says that in the black veil there may be has a consciousness of secret sin. Also, he is a parson in Milford meeting-house and a gentlemanly person, so without the veil, Hooper would be a just typical minister, “guilty of the typical sins of every human, but holier than most” (Boone par.7). He would be a typical minister who is guilty of the typical sins of every human without the black veil. Also, Boone said, “If he confesses his sin, the community can occur” (Boone par.16). If he confesses his sin about the black veil, all of the neighbors will hate him. Last, he said, “so, the veil is a saying: it is constantly signifying, constantly speaking to the people of the possibility of Hooper’s sin” (Boone par.11). Mr. Hooper’s veil says that he is trying to not tell the sins about the black veil. In conclusion, every people have sins that cannot tell to anyone like Mr. Hooper.