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The Minister's Black Veil Essay

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Essential Question #1 The morale of the story, The Minister's Black Veil, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is people judge others by how they look or appear to them then how the person acts. Mr. Hooper, a reverend from the story, goes through this same experience and he gets judged for being different. In the paragraphs I will describe what the people in the story say to him before and after he wears his veil. I will also write about how the people act differently towards Mr. Hooper before and after he wears his black veil. Before Mr. Hooper wore his veil, the people in the article describes him as, “ a gentlemanly person, of about thirty, though still a bachelor, was dressed with due clerical neatness, as if a careful wife had starched his …show more content…

Hooper’s veil was stated in this quote, “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). They felt weird around Mr. Hooper because no man has ever worn a veil on his face before, let alone in front of a huge crowd of people. The reverend, Mr. Hooper, now has everyone's eyes on him, but that doesn’t stop him from teaching, in fact it helps him get more respect and gets the congregation to listen to him more. In the article I found that his sermons now have a little flare to what he says now because of the black veil he weirs. For example, the article states, “The sermon which he now delivered was marked by the same characteristics of style and manner as the general series of his pulpit oratory. But there was something, either in the sentiment of the discourse itself, or in the imagination of the auditors, which made it greatly the most powerful effort that they had ever heard from their pastor's lips.” (Hawthorne). This proves that with the veil, Mr. Hooper gets more attention and authority by being different than he did by being his standard self. I believe this relates to my thesis because society judges more from the looks of people, than on how the person acts or behaves towards other

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“In The Minister's Black Veil” his style was more effective even though he got judged on by his appearance. Because people felt like that if he was preacher then why is he wearing this piece of cloth or sheet he had on. ”Mr Hooper fiance had told Mr.Hooper that she wouldn't want to wear it if she was him”. All together they all thought that Mr.Hooper was an awful men because of what he had on. He wasn't really an aggressive men until when he just got tired of everything and everyone turning against

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In this story, the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, uses imagination over reason. “ When Hooper begins to wear the veil, he introduces the idea that even the minister may have dark sins to hide(Becnel).” I agree with this opinion. The minister wore this veil because literally everyone can have sinned. He wore it as a symbol representing that he isn’t as “pure” as everyone would think.

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He no longer fit in with the people in the village and he didn’t meet their expectations of what a minister should be like so they started saying things about Mr.Hooper. At the beginning of the story when they were in the church and Mr.Hooper began wearing the veil a person

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Mr. Hooper knew that his image is frightening to some and was fearful to find that same image looking back at him. This presence he now has attached to his being lasts for years up to and after his death, where the questions of why he wore the black veil are still asked and follow his

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Hooper wearing the veil this makes everyone consider him an outcast to society. Before the service and old woman said “I don’t like it” and she hobbled into the meeting-house”(Hawthorne 1). As a result of Hooper wearing the veil he makes this old lady avoid his service because she is scared of him. At the close of the service many people went straight home by themselves and the other huddled in small groups and ignored Mr. Hooper and instead talked about him. Nothing, not the pleas of the elders, nor the nudging of Elizabeth , nor his own loneliness can persuade Hooper to remove the piece of black crape that separates him so dramatically from society (Boone).

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People from other places wanting to see him just to see the “minister with the black veil”. Many other dying sinners were always welcoming him to preach all their sins to him before they left their dying beds. “In this manner, Mr.Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in outward act, yet shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving, though unloved, and dimly feared; a man apart from men, shunned in their health and joy, but ever summoned to their aid of mortal anguish.” (14, Hawthorne) Eventually, all those stares and reactions towards his black veil made his life miserable and everywhere he sees himself in the glass mirror Mr.Hooper is unable to see himself again like he uses to do before. Among his death bed, his beloved Elizabeth came to take care of him and Reverend Mr.Clark to seek him into conclusion and to help him leave those sins so much he had attached himself to liberate him to the spiritual light.

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