In Hawthorne's tale, why does the minister wear a black veil?.
The minister in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil- wears a black veil because Hawthorne is trying to communicate to the reader that all people, whether we can actually see it or not, have a veil that separating them from eternal goodness. The color black is an obvious allusion to several facets of the above hypothesis: black represents evil, of which we all, as humans, must fight; black represents death, which, in a manner of speaking, we are all dead until, according to the Christian way of looking at things, "born again,"" in a belief in Christ as savior.
By having a minister wear the black veil, the effect upon the reader is that much more powerful for the reader. A minister, a man of God, is just as "fallen- as an ordinary person or a person who isn't a minister. Hooper, the minister in this story, makes the point that all men "even ministers "are sinners or afflicted with evil or fallen, etc., when he says that "I , perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil- (635).
Further, the minister alludes again that all people, himself included, are sinners and plagued with a darkness of which there is no escape, save in Christ: "If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough an if I cover for secrete sin, what mortal might not do the same- (635). Later, on his deathbed, Hooper states: "Tremble also at each other!- Hawthorne is saying through his character Hooper that all people have sin and that it is only by confronting that sin that one can delivered from it.
