Hooper interacts with his plighted wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth is the only one of the townspeople that is brave enough to ask Mr.Hooper about the reason behind wearing the veil. She had a simple request, "Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face (12)", but Mr. Hooper persisted it must never come off. She assumes that he has decided to wear the veil only because he is hiding some secret sin or crime. "Beloved and respected as you are, there may be whispers that you hide your face under the consciousness of secret sin.
Hooper’s face!” “Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hooper’s intellects,” observed her husband, the physician of the village. “But the strangest part of the affair is the effect of this vagary, even on a sober-minded man like myself. The black veil, though it covers only our pastor’s face, throws its influence over his whole person, and makes him ghostlike from head to foot. Do you not feel it so?” “Truly do I,” replied the lady; “and I would not be alone with him for the world. I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with himself!” “Men sometimes are so,” said her husband.
Hooper’s life after he started wearing the veil was so lonely and isolated he had no-one to comfort him at his death-bed. The veil is the most prominent symbol in the parable of The Minister's Black Veil. The veil represents the congregations doubts about salvation, the exposition of concealed sin, alienation, and Minister Hooper’s secret sin. Throughout the parable, Hawthorne provides clues as to what the veil symbolizes; for example, the words “I look around me and, lo, on every face I see a Black Veil!”. However, even with the subtle hints, the ambiguity of the veil still leaves readers and critics wondering what it
The people understood Hooper’s veil as a sort of concealing a secret sin, or an act of pure insanity and therefore shunned away from him. “In this manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in outward act, yet shrouded in dismal suspicions: kind and loving though unloved and dimly feared; a man apart from men, shunned in their health and joy” (11). The shallow analysis of the town people of the true representation of Hooper’s veil, led to the creation of a fence between Mr. Hooper and his congregation instead of dismantling the fake façade that separate people’s inner souls from the apparent personalities. Perhaps Mr. Hooper underestimated the fear of admitting sin among people; therefore, instead of evoking people to acknowledge that everyone hides a secret sin behind a “veil” of pretenses, believes, and behavior, Hooper was himself accused of hiding a sin as Elizabeth declared, “… there may be whispers that you hide your face under the consciousness of secret sin” (8). The writing style of Hawthorne is unclear whether Hooper intended to show that each person lives in a state of sin to start with, or whether he simply wanted to make a point that Sunday morning to go along with the topic of his sermon.
By doing this, Mr. Hooper is denying the townspeople the ability to see his face and forcing them to focus only on what he is saying. As time goes on, the veil forces them to reflect on what it might mean, and what their own veils might be hiding. On the day that Mr. Hooper debuted the black veil, he was to give a Sunday sermon in place of the town’s usual pastor, who had been called away to attend a funeral in his hometown. The topic of Mr. Hooper’s sermon that day was about how people tend to hide their sins from each other, but that God can see even what is concealed. At first, the veil seems relevant, a performance art piece to add drama and dread to the topic of the day’s sermon.
In the story “The Minister’s Black Veil” the people in the village started to judge Mr.Hooper because of the veil. They all wanted to know why their minister suddenly began to wear a black veil hiding his face from them. He no longer fit in with the people in the village and he didn’t meet their expectations of what a minister should be like so they started saying things about Mr.Hooper. At the beginning of the story when they were in the church and Mr.Hooper began wearing the veil a person
These themes can be seen throughout the story as Mr. Hooper, the main character as a Reverend, punishes himself over a sin that is never revealed. He punishes himself to the utmost ability by blocking himself from the rest of the world, which in turn causes him to lose his social status and soon become a dark and mysterious man. Although society often frowns upon unexplained or uncommon beliefs, one should still be bound to them even if there are those who greatly oppose it, like Reverend Hooper had done in “The Minister’s Black Veil”. Even though Mr. Hooper is in a healthy relationship with his wife, he says, “Know, then this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it ever, both in light and darkness, in solitude and before the gaze of multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my familiar friends. No mortal eye will see it withdrawn.
By wearing the veil, he had to commit another sin and lie to his fiancée about why he was wearing it and he broke their vows as a result. (Article 3) In conclusion Mr. Hooper was hiding something he did and that’s why he wore the veil. The articles mainly had reasons why he would wear the veil and they were mostly because of possible sins. The evidence shows that he wore the veil the day of the maiden's funeral. There were only a few examples that supported him wearing the veil, but not because of
Just like how there are different levels of interpretations of the story there are also different perceptions of what the black veil symbolizes. The black veil may symbolize Mr.Hopper's specific secret sin. Subsequently, the black veil could symbolize the concept of the secret sins that we carry in our heart. Then again, the black veil can represent secret sin and the darkness of humanity . All this can be seen when in the story, it says "The subject had reference to secret sin,.." (Hawthorne 3) and "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" (Hawthorne 4).
They all began to ostracize him without knowing the deeper meaning of Hooper’s intentions. When the people first see him in the veil, they noted that it gave a new energy to his sermon. The subject of the sermon was that of reference to secret sin and the deplorable secrets that people hide from their loved ones. As the story goes on, tensions begin