Jonathan Edwards Rhetorical Analysis Essay

The meaning and style in " Sinners in the hands of an angry God" and "The ministers black veil" compare and contrast because in Jonathan Edwards sermon in "Sinners in the hands of an angry God" really showed how strong his religious belief was. Edwards sermon was very serious. Edwards purpose was to scare people into changing their ways by making them believe that God was going to condemn them to hell for their sins. The story contains imagery, analogy, hyperbole, and diction. In the sermon Edwards spoke in a very harsh, scary, forceful, judgemental, but yet passionate tone.

Jonathan Edwards uses several types of writing skills to persuade his audience of God’s intentions. His use of figurative language, analogies, imagery, and repetition all emphasize Edwards’s views. He uses fear, anger, and apathy to appeal to the audience in attempt to warn his audience of God’s intentions.

“The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is full of many different symbols, but the most notable one is the veil itself. Throughout the story, Hawthorne presents many instances where the veil could mean several things. Some may see only one meaning, however, others may see a number of them. Hawthorne may have been the only one who truly knew what the veil symbolized, but at the same time the fact that the story makes the reader think even after reading it is what makes it all the more interesting to analyze. The veil itself could symbolize things such as rebirth, secrecy, ambiguity.

Hawthorne uses imagery to depict how Rev. Hooper sacrificed the representation of the veil. The black veil is thought to represent secret sin. Hooper exposed himself through the veil which caused him to banish himself because he upholds the community's sins. Hooper upheld the sins for the entire community and felt it would be seen as an ethical fluctuation by wearing the veil. He does not give specific reason into why he refuses to remove the veil but imagery used in the parable convinces readers that Hooper has beliefs that he is some kind of

this point Edwards has grasped the attention of his listeners by using pathos to pertain to their

Often in Sermons ministers/pastors persuade their audience to behave in a spiritual or moral fashion. Such is the case in “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” by Johnathan Edwards where he says “sinners should repent for their sins or burn in the eternal pit of hell. If sinners repent, they will receive eternal life.” God destroys sinners, but is merciful to the repentant. Edwards wanted to impact his audience by appealing to the fears pity and vanity. Edwards had a powerful impact on his Puritan audience because the use of a cautionary tone, explicit imagery, and vivid figurative language.

The ideas presented in Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, are intensified by the use of rhetorical devices. Edward’s successfully preaches to his Puritan audience about the horridness of God’s wrath with the use of rhetoric. Sermons, such as Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, contributed to the redirecting of the

Puritan belief lends itself to the idea that outward appearance is often an indicator of inward holiness. Unfortunately, that belief leads to this reaction towards Mr. Hooper whenever he wears a plain, black veil: "'I can't really feel as if good Mr. Hooper's face was behind that piece of crape'… 'I don't like it'… 'He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his face.' … 'Our parson has gone mad!' ("The Minister's Black Veil" 410). Mr. Hooper's audience even begins to distrust him, leading one to say "'I would not be alone with him for the world,'" ("The Minister's Black Veil" 411-2). Although Mr. Hooper remains unchanged for the most part, the black veil changes his appearance and the townsfolk's opinion of him. This superficiality, Hawthorne insinuates, should not be characteristic of Puritan communities. One common interpretation of Mr. Hooper's veil is that it represents the secret sin everyone bears. However, given Mr. Hooper's treatment, one would be surprised to learn that everyone is cognizant of that fact. The town is made uncomfortable by Mr. Hooper's sermon on secret sin, and so they ostracize him ("The Minister's Black Veil" 411). Even on his deathbed, people plea for him to take off the veil, and instead he cries "'Why do you temble at me alone?'…'Tremble also at each other!'...'I look around me, and lo! On every visage a black veil!'"(417-8). Hawthorne highlights the hypocrisy of Puritans with Mr. Hooper's ostracization. A Puritan is a hypocrite if they should cruelly treat someone because of appearance or sin as both of these are considered unimportant and unavoidable, respectively, in Puritan

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil”, we are presented with Reverend Parson Hooper, an admirable Puritan preacher who decides to start wearing a black veil. Mr. Hooper’s decision to cover his face almost entirely, except for the mouth and chin with that “mysterious emblem” (#) agitated the town of Milford. It incited gossip within the community about him and the reason why he chose to wear the black veil in the first place, which the townspeople thought represented the Reverend’s sins. This gossiping and the rumors that the people created could be considered a way of hypocrisy, due to the fact that they are judging someone else’s sins rather than acknowledging their own sins, which is the message that Mr. Hooper is trying to

What can you expect from a minister from changing persona where people use to see him as a “gentlemanly men, of about thirty, though still a bachelor, was dressed with due clerical neatness.” Then have a change in his appearance where it drastically changes his life. By a piece of cloth over his head accounts reactions of the congregation to it, the veil, a black veil that changed the image and the reactions of the people from Westbury. It is just a man, Mr.Hooper, who Hawthorne is modulating between dramatic incidents involving the black veil and Mr.Hooper approaches dramatic reactions towards it, in the short story the “Minister’s Black Veil”. The key symbol of the short story is the black veil it represented the spiritual isolation between

“ We magnify the flaws in others that we secretly see in ourselves” -Baylor Barbee. In “ The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the main character Reverend Hooper is alienated by his community because he is the wearer of a mysterious black veil. Reverend Hooper is the reverend of his community’s church and has always been well respected by his surrounding peers. One day, Hooper shows up to his church and preaches the sermon wearing a mysterious black veil causing his peers to alienate him. Throughout the story, Hooper’s actions portray just how judgmental our society really is. In the “Minister’s Black Veil”, Hawthorne displays Hooper and the symbol of the veil as a representation of how judgmental society can become when faced with situations they don’t understand even though they have no right to judge.

In the Minister’s Black Veil, the black veil has a great significance to the story. The black veil symbolizes the secret sin in society. The sins of humanity are the greatest sin which society hides and ignores. People do not take account of the bad deeds that are going on every single day. This Parable does an outstanding job of doing that because Mr. Hooper goes on with his day normally, but by having that veil on his face it exemplifies that sin is occurring. The three levels in this parable of understanding the symbolism are to first understand what the author is objectifying the most in the parable. And in this case, it is a black piece of clothing that is covering his face. When an author keeps on repeating the same thing over and over again, it has to symbolize something. Secondly, the black veil got in the way of people. Such as, his soon to be wife. Just because he didn’t show his bare face to Elizabeth, she ended their relationship. “...material emblem had separated him from happiness, though the horrors, which it shadowed forth, must be drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers.” (Hawthorne 12) Hooper is thinking about what he has done but still doesn’t do anything about it because the black veil signified something more important to him. “Each character, then, is faced with the prospect of assuming mature responsibilities, and each story is an account of how he responds to this crucial psychological situation.” (Askew 2)

First off, I think that Father Hooper’s black veil symbolizes everyone’s secret sins. In the beginning of the story, church begins and Hooper appears concealed by a black veil, and everybody is mystified. He then begins to preach about these secret sins in his sermon. By doing this, Hawthorne shows that this is what the veil

The main character in “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Mr. Hooper represents how everyone carries a sin with them but some choose to acknowledge it, while others choose to hide them.