Ambiguism In The Minister's Black Veil

French designer Philippe Starck once claims: “I like to open the doors to people’s brain.” Nathaniel Hawthorne 's short story “The Minister’s Black Veil” reflects this principle in which the author advertently creates ambiguities and opens the possibilities of interpretation to the readers. Nathaniel Hawthorne employs commonplace symbols to present the ambiguity of sin and secrecy through a psychological lens in “The Minister’s Black Veil”. This short story also reflected the principle of Puritanism as well, such as the idea of manifest destiny represented by Mr. Hooper in the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts. It is also worth to notice that John Hawthorne, one of the Salem Witch Trial Judges, was his great-grandfather (Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography). Since Salem was his hometown, he developed his writing through the gospel of American Puritanism and intend to spread those principles through his literature which also gives the focus of his literature. Hawthorne’s writing style was unique and was well-regarded for several reasons. First of all, Hawthorne induces readers to use their own imagination to interpret the meaning of the tale, as it is evident in “The Minister’s Black Veil”. Moreover, he likes to present multi-fold and multi-perspective of a character. From those aspects, it is easy to conclude that Hawthorne is skeptical about facts, he leaves the reader with the choice to determine what is true what is not. In addition, Hawthorne is also skillful in using guilt to display characters and then examine the effect of the guilt, as evident in the hidden sin and potential guilt associated with Mr.

Hooper in “The Minister’s Black Veil”. It is not until the very end of the story that Mr. Hooper states his reason for not taking down the veil even in the last few hours of his