Nathaniel Hawthorne is associated with the "anti-transcendentalists." The following are a few of the reasons that would lead me to believe that he does, in fact, fall under this category. First of all, anti-transcendentalism believed that the transcendentalists" point of view was too positive. They also believed that the works of these authors didn't look very closely at the evil in the world. Whereas, anti-transcendentalists focused on the existence of sin and evil; therefore, their works were very dark. They viewed Nature as both a good and a bad thing. They believed that it had both a good and a bad side. Nature reflected all that was paradoxical and unexplainable. They also focused highly on the limitations of us as humans, and stressed that we all have the potential to be bad and destructive. This side of the movement only has two writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Hawthorne shows the ideas of this literary movement very well in "The Minister's Black Veil." The ideas can be very easily found throughout the entire story. The story deals with sin and hidden guilt and humility all in a very dark story that demonstrates the true insight of the Puritan conscience. He showed this by using a black veil covering the minister's face to symbolize human sin. He symbolized the ideas of life's truth being disturbing. The minister had badly sinned; he hid these sad things from those that he was closest to. The following quote from the story is an example of the idea that we all have sins that we hide, but it is pointless to do so, because God can still see them. "The subject had bad reference to secret sin, and these sad mysteries which we hid from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our consciousness, even forgetting that the omniscient can detect them." Also care attention should be paid to the following description. "At that instant, catching a glimpse of his figure in the looking glass, the black veil involved his own spirit in the horror with which overwhelmed all others.
