What Are The Similarities Between The Minister's Black Veil And Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge

Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ambrose Bierce express their dark romantic writing styles in a way to create a certain emotion to the reader. In Hawthorne’s “The Minister's Black Veil” and Bierce’s “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” both stories are similar in their use of symbolism and irony to add depth to the story and contrast in their use of tone.
Symbolism is one technique used by both authors. A major symbol in “The Minister’s Black Veil” is Reverend Hooper’s black veil. At the end of the story, as he rest on his deathbed, Reverend Hooper described the purpose of the veil as a secret sin “which I have lived , and die! I look around me and lo! On every visage a Black Veil!” (Hawthorne 242). The black veil is a symbol of secret immorality that people carry in their hearts and are reluctant to confess. Mr. Hooper

The tone in “The Minister’s Black Veil” is dark and depressing as the sentences describes: “It was tinged, rather more darkly than usual, with the gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper’s temperament. 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.”
The tone produces a sense of mystery as to why the minister’s refuses to remove the veil. No one ever truly knows another being or perhaps themselves. This creates an incredibly miserable and isolating concept. However, Bierce has a difference use of tone describing the emotions of Farquhar. He wrote, "The intellectual part of his nature was already effected; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment"(Bierce 294). Bierce adds an unreliable perspective that foreshadows the ending that things are not as they appear. The shifts in tone also call attention to Bierce’s manipulation of the narrative. The story is in third person so it lacks barely any emotion. There is only a focus on physical pain, not emotion