What Does The Minister's Black Veil Symbolize

“The Minister’s Black Veil:” The Morals of Sinning

The central themes of The Minister's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne is presented with a parable, a simple story illustrating a moral or religious lesson that makes the truth have a deeper meaning and easy to understand. Having to read both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe was very interesting but, I decided to choose Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Minister's Black Veil" because Nathaniel's story was more interesting, mysterious, and easier to understand than The House of Usher in my opinion since Nathaniel's character, Mr. Hooper, was mysterious throughout the whole story and had many different themes to his parable that involves his veil that can symbolize many reasons.

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Hooper wears the black veil throughout his whole life until death throughout the story. The black veil can symbolize many possible reasons. First symbolism is, it could be representative of Mr. Hooper's specific sin of his own since many people believe he might had a relationship with the dead maiden before she died since a lady saw them walking hand-in-hand, "Why do you look back?" said one in the procession to his partner. 'I had a fancy,' she replies, 'that the minister and the maiden's spirit were walking hand-in-hand.' 'And so had I, at the same moment,' said the other." (Hawthorne 7). Second symbolism is the secret sins that all people carry in their hearts because Mr. Hooper accepted wearing the veil in the real world but, many people wear black veils just not physically. As explained by Elaine Barry, "Suffice it to say that the mainstream of the argument has moved, in logical sequence, from one polarity (seeing the veil as an honestly accepted symbol of human limitation, and Mr, Hooper thus as an Everyman figure, humbly embodying the fate of all of us who must see life through a veil darkly). The third and final symbolism is the secret sins and the darkness of humanity. According to Sue Cording, "He intends the story to teach a moral lesson, to carry a didactic message to his readers, illustrating an important truth about the human condition." Why? well because when Mr. Hooper began to wear the black veil many people of the village began to make up

The first lesson is to avoid the sin of secret sin because there is always a consequence to our sins or secret faults. Mr. Hooper wore the black veil throughout his whole life, the consequences that came with it was that he was left alone when his fiancee walked out on him because he wouldn't at least show his face to her no matter what, leading Elizabeth to believe he didn't really love her and at the end he was buried with veil seeing the world through the black veil. The second lesson is the veil can be compared to man's way of trying to hide the hideous acts of a sin by trying to cover it up with a "fig leaf" as in the case of Adam and Eve. Sue Cording pointed out that, "Dark veils make it harder to understand what others mean in the discussion, that being unable to see the eyes of the person with whom one is talking creates a serious barrier to communication. We then talk about why this is so. I remind them of the popular adage that 'the eyes are the windows of the soul.' The essence of what we communicate is not so much in our words but, in our eyes. No other part of the body has the eloquence of language that the eyes command. Now the stage is set for them to read about what happens when a highly regarded religious leader of a small Puritan town decides that no one will ever see his eyes again." When someone is looking at your eyes it's like they can see everything you done and every lie you