The Minister's Black Veil

"The Minister's Black Veil", was a very good short story, but I found it kind of unique.  The story is all about a man wearing this black veil that covers his head.  "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. On a nearer view it seemed to consist of two folds of crape, which entirely concealed his features, except the mouth and chin, but probably did not intercept his sight, further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things" (Hawthorne 280-281)  You did not have to do much reading to find that one out, but I was wondering why this was.  Why would a story be put into place, by hiding a man's face.  Surely there are plenty of other ways to demonstrate the dark romanticism writing style.  I am not dissing the story at all, but I was confused a little bit.  I really did like the story because I could understand it, as to where some of the other poems that we have read for homework and in class have been hard to follow.

The story starts off and everybody is not knowing how to react to what Mr. Hooper was wearing.  They did not like it for the most part, but were questioning whether it was him or not behind the veil.  As Mr. Hooper went up and gave his speech or whatever the message is called, (for some reason I can not think of it right now), it then went in to the dark romanticism style of writing.  "The subject had reference to secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them" (Hawthorne 282).  The black veil is starting to make a little more sense now.  It may be the fact to hide his sin and he wanted it to be portrayed in his message.  Just like I thought.  They wonder what "horrible sin Pastor Hooper hides" underneath the black veil, but because nobody asks Pastor Hooper, the secret died with him (Werlock).  In portraying his message with the veil, it is a great way to do this.  It shows that things are hidden, (sin) and he does so by hiding his face behind this veil.

"How strange," said a lady, "that a simple black veil, such as any woman might wear on her bonnet, should become such a terrible thing on Mr. Hooper's face!"

"Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hooper's intellects," observed her husband, the physician of the village. "But the strangest part of the affair is the effect of this vagary, even on a sober-minded man like myself. The black veil, though it covers only our pastor's face, throws its influence over his whole person, and makes him ghostlike from head to foot. Do you not feel it so?" (Hawthorne 283).  Here, I find this very funny because they are acting as if the man has gone crazy and they have never seen anything like it, and this is different from the rest of the stories, because there were no funny things that were happening.

Werlock, Abby H. P. "'The Minister's Black Veil'." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 22 Jan. 2012.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Minister's Black Veil." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 280-289. Print.