A Guilty Conscience Guilt can cause people to want to give up or quit, but for some, it is used as motivation. Everyone experiences guilt at one point in his or her life whether they did something wrong or did not do enough to help (Barker). Guilt is often used to persuade people to act a certain way. Society uses this and other methods of guilt. Authors use guilt to relate to their readers. Guilt is a universal feeling that everyone understands. Within american literature the theme of guilt influences characters’ mood, actions, and decisions. People tend to relate to characters and texts that use the theme of guilt because they have all experienced its affects. Guilt by definition is a “bad feeling caused by knowing or thinking that you have done something bad or wrong” (Webster). Guilt affects each person differently, therefore each person responds to this emotion in an individual …show more content…
When the minister walks into the church with a black veil flowing in front of his face the congregation is immediately uncomfortable. The veil represents the sins of humans. As soon as the congregation sees him they begin to question him. Some of the congregation members deal with this representation of guilt by getting angry with the minister and ordering him to take it off. Other members decide to ignore the minister and go out of their way to avoid him. They do this because the veil reminds them of their own guilt. The minister keeps the veil on his face for the duration of his life. While he is dying, the people around him want to take the veil off of him. The minister rejects this idea and is buried with the veil on his face. Once he has died, the people around him feel guilty because they wanted to take the veil off of him instead of leaving the minister alone. The guilt that is shown by Hawthorne in this story, is displayed more effectively in “The