The biggest presence of characteristics that I notice in the story, "The Minister's Black Veil" was mystery. The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, used mystery as the driving tool this story. The whole story revolved around the mystery behind the Minister's veil. I have to say that if my minister at church came to church on Sunday wearing a black veil; it would make me rather curious. For some reason I think that humans automatically assume that something is wrong when there is a sudden change in the appearance or behaviors of someone they know very well. Just like when a group of people is talking and one person walks away. When that person comes back to the group, if anyone in the group is laughing, the person who left is automatically under the impression that they were being talked about. That is most of the time not the case, but I think it is human nature to assume that people are being negative.
Even though the people of the church have no other reason to think that something weird was going on with their minister, they assume that he is hiding something. Like I said earlier, I agree with the people of the church that it would be a little weird, but I don’t think that I would go so far as to say that he was hiding something. I am not really sure what the author meant in saying that the Earth was wearing her black veil too (Hawthorne 284). I think that he may be talking about the mask that people put on to hide their evil thoughts. When I think about people who wear black fabric over their faces, I think about bank robbers. It is really common for people to wear a black disguise if they are going to rob a bank.
It is very interesting that even Elizabeth, Mr. Hooper’s lover does not know the motivation for Mr. Hooper to wear the black veil. Eventually Elizabeth gets so fed up with him wearing the veil that she says that he is going to have to choose between her or wearing the black veil. I found it interesting that he chose the black veil. He thinks that it is more important to him that he covers up his face with a black veil. I guess Elizabeth was expecting him to say that he would take off the veil for her, but because of his decision to keep the veil on, she is going to leave him to find another man.
It is also interesting that the minister goes all the way to his grave without talking off the veil and letting anyone see his face. I thought that when he said yes that meant that he was going to let the man take the veil off of the minister’s face. I was wrong again. It seems like the minister is really just trying to get peoples’ hopes up because it turns out that he does not let them take it off. I think that the use of mystery was also shown at the end when the author never explains why the minister had a black veil over his face. The reader is left open ended with no clue as to why the minister was covering his face. Was he just trying to get a rise out of people? Or was he really hiding something bad that he has done. Sarah Wright says that Edgar Allan Poe had the idea of thinking that the minister was maybe hiding something that had to do with the death of the woman's funeral that he composed (Wright).
Stade, George, and Karen Karbiener. "romanticism." Encyclopedia of British Writers, 1800 to the Present, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= EBWEP364&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 23, 2012).
Wright, Sarah Bird. "'The Minister's Black Veil'." Critical Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCNH403&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 24, 2012).
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