“I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the short parable, “The Minister’s Black Veil” as a reflection on the Puritan’s beliefs around him. The story follows Reverend Hooper, who decides to wear a black veil that covers his face. He indulges judgements, loneliness, and even the loss of his fiancé. He wears his veil till death barely answering questions about why he wore it. Hawthorne’s elaborate use of allegory and diction portrayed his views on the judgmental Puritan ways around him. “And good Mr. Hooper’s face is dust; but awful is still the thought that it moldered beneath the Black Veil!” The black veil had represented a moral truth that Hawthorne wanted to express based on his life. Hooper
