During the 1800s, a new writer emerged and with his fiction stories, Nathaniel Hawthorne became a provocative writer who utilized the Puritans’ religious beliefs against them. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the tale, “The Minister's Black Veil,” and utilized literary devices, such as symbolism to emphasize the protagonist’s emotions of guilt and sorrow. The theme of the story is sin and guilt and all throughout the story the protagonist, the minister, struggles with the idea of self identity. The minister committed a sin and he feels as if that sin is a reflection of who he is as a person. A minister is a person who reflects purity and in the story, the black veil the minister wears after having committed the sin represents the misery he is going