Nathaniel Hawthorne created a suspenseful and mysterious plot in, "The Minister's Black Veil." I was disappointed that the veil's symbloic meaning was never revealed, but it increased my curiosity even more intensely to find out for myself what the veil meant to me. Hawthorne organizes the story sequentially, and each paragraph adds more anxiety to the last. I believe that the veil has religious meaning, because the veil belonged to a Reverend, and his occupation is probably one of few occupations where it would be possible to wear it constantly. I find it hard to determine whether the veil only represents something to the Rev. Mr. Hooper, or whether its meaning applies to everyone.
In my opion, the most impressionable line in the story is when the Rev. cries out before he dies: "Why do you tremble at me alone? Tremble also at each other! 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 most 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!" (Hawthorne 138) Hawthorne seems to focus here on the effects the veil has on the people around Hooper. It seems that they have treated him as if he was a monster, and the veil a symbol of a terrible sin. But now, Mr. Hooper points out that the people have become monsters themselves and the sin lies in their own judgment and treatment of him. In Mr. Hooper's view, many small sins, such as the peoples' behavior toward him, may be worse than one loathsome sin, such as what may be hidden behind the black veil.
Julie McWhorter