Everyone messes up at some point, something that is regretted deeply. Many people try to hide this or just push it off, they simply don’t want to confront the sins they have committed. This concept is pushed deeply in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story the “Minister’s Black Veil”. Through the story the theme of everyone having secret sins that they do not want to confront is pushed through the elements of symbolism and characterization.
Being as it is in the title the black veil in the story means a lot. The Minster puts this veil on for a reason. This reason can easily be seen by what the Minister’s sermon the day he put it on was about, “It was tinged, rather more darkly than usual, with the gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper’s temperament. The subject …show more content…
Despite him using the theme in “The Minister’s Black Veil” of everyone having secret sins that they don’t want to confront through the symbolism with the black veil and the dead girl making it all the more powerful and with characterization with the way Elizabeth reacted and how the townsfolk reacted. Even today as Mr. Hooper put it “then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and ide! I look around me, and, lo! On every visage a Black Veil!’ While his auditors shrank from one another, in mutual affright, Father Hooper fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse, with a faint smile lingering on his lips” (pg. 482). Yes, as the minister put it everyone still has a veil and this has kept on to this day. It does not take long to find someone who hides their sins from others and themselves (maybe even by looking within). Against what might be assumed the minister’s smile was not to say that the problem had been fixed, but to say that progress had been made. This is just like it has in recent times, people today are certainly not as bad as many of the Puritans. It all just means that Nathaniel Hawthorne wasn’t completely successful put partially and that’s at least on the right track. Because as the drug help groups say the first step to fixing a problem is admitting there is
Being as it is in the title the black veil in the story means a lot. The Minster puts this veil on for a reason. This reason can easily be seen by what the Minister’s sermon the day he put it on was about, “It was tinged, rather more darkly than usual, with the gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper’s temperament. The subject …show more content…
Despite him using the theme in “The Minister’s Black Veil” of everyone having secret sins that they don’t want to confront through the symbolism with the black veil and the dead girl making it all the more powerful and with characterization with the way Elizabeth reacted and how the townsfolk reacted. Even today as Mr. Hooper put it “then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and ide! I look around me, and, lo! On every visage a Black Veil!’ While his auditors shrank from one another, in mutual affright, Father Hooper fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse, with a faint smile lingering on his lips” (pg. 482). Yes, as the minister put it everyone still has a veil and this has kept on to this day. It does not take long to find someone who hides their sins from others and themselves (maybe even by looking within). Against what might be assumed the minister’s smile was not to say that the problem had been fixed, but to say that progress had been made. This is just like it has in recent times, people today are certainly not as bad as many of the Puritans. It all just means that Nathaniel Hawthorne wasn’t completely successful put partially and that’s at least on the right track. Because as the drug help groups say the first step to fixing a problem is admitting there is