The Minister's Black Veil

Amanda Onalaja

October 20, 2009

Pd. 2 – Ms. Brown

“The Minister’s Black Veil”, another short story written by Nathanial Hawthorne is an appeal to pathos. The narrative aims to stir emotions, especially those surrounding religion. The main character is Mr. Hooper, “a gentlemanly person, of about thirty, though still a bachelor, was dressed with due clerical neatness, as if a careful wife had starched his band, and brushed the weekly dust from his Sunday's garb”. Overall he’s depicted to readers as a well rounded preacher whom the congregation adored. He’s described as being good repetitively, “…good Parson Hooper… good Mr. Hooper… if good Mr. Hooper's face”, the story begins somewhat positively. Until readers are informed of the change in Mr. Hooper’s appearance, “There was but one thing remarkable in his appearance. Swathed about his forehead, and hanging down over his face, so low as to be shaken by his breath, Mr. Hooper had on a black veil”. The symbolic black veil is the focus of the entire story.

Coincidently, just as the congregation in the story, reader’s are not given too much information regarding the reason for the veil or the events that lead up to its obviously unexpected arrival, however immediately the church members become flustered and afraid, “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”. The man the community once loved and praised has suddenly become suspicious of Mr. Hooper all at the sight and mystery of his veil. For example, at the funeral of a young woman, Mr. Hooper leans over in her casket but quickly retracts and grabs his veil as if afraid the corpse might see his face. This action was seen by a member and others begin conversing, “‘Why do you look back?’ said one in the procession to his partner. ‘I had a fancy,’ replied she, ‘that the minister and the maiden's spirit were walking hand in hand.’ ‘And so had I, at the same moment,’ said the other”.

Finally at the story’s end, when Mr. Hooper’s on his deathbed, readers get an understanding of the veil’s purpose, “Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil? What, but the mystery which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his best beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil”. With his last breath, Hooper claims the black veil was like the sin of the world, which he felt he should take on, he also criticizes the people of his hypocritical community, for shunning him like a monster because they feared the unknown. However Hooper tried to prove his point, and suffered with the weight for years, one wonders why he continued to wear the veil in the afterlife.