The Minister's Black Veil Literary Analysis Essay

"The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a parable written to ponder the mind of the reader and to make them realize many aspects of life. A parable is a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson. This early American Romanticism story is about a Minister named Parson Hooper who, wore a black veil on his face, covering it entirely. He lived in a small little village, where he was the Minister and soon he started to wear a black veil for the multiple reasons but the most important reason is articulated several times in the parable.

Could a simple black veil take on the sins of an entire community? At intervals, veils are often thought to be worn by a bride in a wedding.For some women in the Muslim world, the veil they wear is a symbol of oppression. In The Minister’s Black Veil, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses strong diction, imagery, and details to portray the sacrifice needed to take on the responsibility of sin by Rev. Hooper donning the black veil.

How willing are you to give up your whole life and reputation to help others by proving a point? In “The Minister 's Black Veil” Nathaniel Hawthorne writes about a minister named Mr. Hooper who changes his whole life to try to show the people in his congregation that they are living in sin and need to change their ways. The author Nathaniel Hawthorne was born around the time when Puritan life was the norm and everyone was a Puritan. Hawthorne also admired his ancestor’s ways and their lifestyles as much as he felt the need for people to have the freedom to strongly disagree about something (Grant). Grant says, “ It is this rich combination of his ancestral soil, a strong sense of the richness of the American past, and that moral quality” which

The Minister’s Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne tells the story of a clergyman and a black veil that scares all who see it.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s parody “The Black Veil,” the reader is introduced to Minister Hooper as he steps out with a black veil over his face to begin a church service. The immediate response of confusion and fear takes over his congregation. Minister Hooper uses the veil as a symbol for the hidden/secret sins that each one of us carries. The irony in this is that the veil is just that, a double folded crape. Hooper’s congregation proved to be harsh and judgmental of the minister not fully understanding why he was veiled. “I don’t like it,” muttered and old woman, as she hobbled into the meetinghouse. “He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his face” (Hawthorne 637). Here Hawthorne could be eluding to the Puritan belief

In the short story The Minister’s Black Veil, Nathaniel Hawthorne proposes that people are hiding their sins and not accepting them through the symbolism of the black veil. People are uncomfortable by Mr.Hooper’s veiled appearance in the church because they feel he knows their sins. Everyone has hidden sins and now with the company of the veil, scandals seem to be out in the open. Hawthorne describes the disgust of the veil, “They shuddered at the veiled face so near...”(Hawthorne 63). Hooper being so close to them with his face veiled, the people felt as if their sins were dangling over them. Nobody wants others to know about the shameful things that they have done or are doing, especially not a minister. Hooper

“Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue,” wrote William Shakespeare in describing the threat of falling into sin while seeking to do good. In “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Reverend Hooper dons a black veil and sins against his social responsibilities as a role model and alienates his congregation while attempting to make them more virtuous. Hooper’s choice highlights the ambiguity of sin and sorrow which is present in the reactions of Hooper’s community towards the veil, Hooper’s fiancée’s reaction to the veil, and Hooper himself, all of whom have difficulty grasping the truth and reality of another person. While I have never literally worn a black veil, I can see how I view the world through the “veil”

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

Through allegory and his intentional vocabulary in ‘the Minister’s Black Veil’, Nathaniel Hawthorne parallels the literal veiling of Minister Hooper’s face with his own withholding of details within the plot. Hawthorne is deliberate in his word choice throughout, keeping with the theme of concealing. By purposeful ambiguity, both the minister and Hawthorne are demonstrating a point to their congregation or reader.

Each person in this world, despite their perfection and their appearance, has something that they regret, or shame that they can not get rid of. But very few people show it; most hide their shame and regrets inside of them, where no one can see it unless they were told. They hide how they feel with happy emotions and smiles. Reverend Hooper, however, chose a different way to represent his shame: by wearing a black veil to cover his face from the community in which he lived. Shocked by the sight of their minister wearing a veil to hide his face, the society instantly branded him as an outcast, isolating him from the community. In “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the main character Reverend Hooper’s alienation, both personal and community, brought on by the black veil to portray the society's moral values about expressing personal shame.

" The Minister's Black Veil", a parable written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is an intriguing story that is about a minister named Mr. Hooper who lived in a small puritan town of Milford. In the story, Mr. Hooper is portrayed to wear a black veil across his face. The Puritan people seemed to be disturbed by the mysterious veil which makes the people in the town full of curiosity. Parson Hooper was isolated by his Fiancee and people in the town to reveal his face by taking off the veil and ask him why he's wearing it and why he won't withdraw it from his face. Parson Hooper is believed to wear the black veil because it is referred as a dark symbol and is alluded to be a "secret sin".

We can all say that we’ve judged people at first glance. Your appearance can say a lot about who you are. There are many situations in which people are being judged wrongfully. In the Minister's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mr. Hooper was being unfairly judged by the black veil he was wearing. I, as well, have judged people unfairly by what they were wearing, but for good reasons. In my opinion, appearance directly links to the type of person you are as shown in the Minister's Black Veil, with the actions people showed towards Mr. Hooper's new look as well as my own experiences.

In "The Ministers Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne "The reason that it is difficult for the congregation and even his fiancée to look upon him is that they only see the veil. "The minister is hiding his face because he is afraid that what he is hiding will show to the people of the church and his fiancée. Mr. Hooper is wearing the veil because he committed a sin; and is hiding it from the town and his church

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.

“ 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.