The Minister's Black Veil

Markeia Scruggs
October 20, 2009
Lit Response
“The Minister’s Black Veil A Parable”
“The Minister’s Black Veil a Parable” is a story of a mysterious man who comes into town and in a way disturbs it. In this story, Mr. Hooper wears a black veil, in which he never removes for anyone, and that seems to bother the townspeople. This veil that he wears covers the entire face, except the mouth and chin. When he attends a funeral, it seems to be appropriate, but when he attends a wedding with the dreadful veil on everyone remorses him. No one knows why he wears the veil, not even his fiancée, Elizabeth. She asks him many times to remove it and he doesn’t, nor does he tell her why he wears it. As a result, she leaves him, breaking off their engagement. Though many people abandon and despise Hooper for his veil, it proves to make him a better clergyman. At his death bed, Elizabeth tries to get him to remove his veil again, but he refuses and ends by stating that everyone wears a veil. This mysterious veil is used by Hawthorne to set the tone of dull American Gothicism. In this story, he uses many elements to do so.
Hooper was actually regarded as a normal person in the beginning. The text states, “a gentlemanly person of about thirty, though still a bachelor…dressed with clerical neatness, as if a careful wife had starched his band and brushed the weekly dust from his Sunday’s garb.” Because the people of the town didn’t understand his intentions for wearing the black veil, they criticized and judged him. “Such was the effect of this simple piece of crape, that more than one woman of delicate nerves was forced to leave the meeting-house. Yet perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister, as his black veil to them.” Hawthorne writes.
Symbolism is used heavily in this story. The black veil in this case represents secret sin. To Hooper, a minister, everyone wore a black veil because everyone has something to hide. “Why do you tremble at me alone? cried he, turning his veiled face round the circle of pale spectators. Tremble also at each other! Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil? What, but mystery which obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his best beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo! On every visage a Black Veil!” Hawthorne’s intense diction finally reveals Hooper’s inner thoughts and feelings, which in a way were concealed by the veil also through out the entire story.
“The Minister’s Black Veil A Parable” is a story that outlines the true nature of human kind. It gives a story within a story and does so by creating an element of suspense. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses many literary elements to feed into the American Gothicism heading. This story definitely makes the reader feel the intensity of the story and American Gothicism in literature.