Shame: A Reason to Cover up One's Face

            Throughout history, human kind have always had the task of developing key roles in society. These roles are based upon values that, if disrespected, might have a negative impact on other's perception about us. Therefore, people have a preconceived idea or concept of what each person's social role is and its behavior. When somebody fails to one of these socially preconceived ideas, pride is affected and it brings about feelings of isolation and embarrassment. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil", two major points prove the existence of shame in Minister Parson Hopper's life: the image of the black veil as a way to hide from the outside world and the presence of the Jungian concepts, shadow, anima and persona, that show that human beings, no matter their social role, make mistakes and do whatever they can to minimize the impact of them. .
             Images play a major role when analyzing a text from a mythic approach. They tell hidden stories about characters .
             or situations. In Hawthorne's story, imagery goes around Mr. Hopper's black veil because that is what the character .
             uses in order to hide from the outside world. The Diccionario de los Simbolos (1991) says that a veil ".stands for dissimulation of secret things" then, if this is the case, Minister Parson Hopper is hiding a secret and it is not an innocent one because of the color of it. According to "The Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature", the black color stands for " chaos, mystery, death evil, melancholy"(pp 161); therefore, an evil sad mysterious secret is hidden behind this black veil. Mr. Hopper's attitude is mysterious due to the kind of arguments he gives when explaining his behavior; he says that: "If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the same?" (pp 293). Of course nobody who feels sorrow, and wears a veil to show it off, wants to keep it as a secret but if somebody wears it and has no reason to wear a veil that is because he/she wants to hide something that he/she is ashamed of.