23 pages • 46 minutes read
Nathaniel HawthorneThe Minister's Black Veil
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1836A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Irony
Irony occurs when reality is the opposite of what was expected. In “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Mr. Hooper wears the black veil to teach the residents that all humans are tainted by Original Sin and to criticize people’s secrecy with others and with God. However, Mr. Hooper himself is guilty of secrecy, for he declines to explain the meaning of the veil. Thus, the black veil that is meant to draw attention to secret sin actually embodies that very same sin. Mr. Hooper’s pride in his own salvation and superior knowledge is another sin inspired by the veil itself.
Dramatic irony is a kind of irony that occurs when readers know more than the characters. In “The Minister’s Black Veil,” dramatic irony occurs when Mr. Hooper does not appear aware of his own hypocrisy.
Parable
The subtitle of “The Minister’s Black Veil” is “A Parable.” A parable is a story with a moral lesson. Hawthorne ends “The Minister’s Black Veil” with a note indicating that a clergyman named Mr. Joseph Moody from York, Maine, like Mr. Hooper “made himself remarkable” by wearing a black veil (13). The difference, however, is that Mr. Moody wore his veil as penance for having “accidentally killed a beloved friend” (13). That Hawthorne embellishes an actual event by removing this concrete tragedy from the veil’s meaning suggests his story is meant to have greater, more abstract meaning.
Pathos
Pathos is a rhetorical device that appeals to the emotions and is meant to elicit feelings of sympathy or compassion. The people feel “[a]n unsought pathos” upon hearing Mr. Hooper’s first sermon from behind the black veil (3). The fact that they “quaked” while listening suggests that, despite their shunning the minister, he has made them contemplate their own secret sin. Mr. Hooper later exhibits pathos when speaking to Elizabeth. When she attempts to leave following his refusal to remove the veil, Mr. Hooper pulls her back, crying, “Have patience with me Elizabeth! […] O! you know now how lonely I am, and how frightened, to be alone behind my black veil. Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity forever!” (9). He exhibits pathos again on his deathbed, when he exclaims to visitors, “Why do you tremble at me alone? […] Tremble also at each other! […] I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!” (13). The contrast between Mr. Hooper’s dramatic exclamations and the people’s failure to comprehend the lessons he is trying to teach them highlights the futility—and perhaps the performative quality—of these lessons.
Point of View
“The Minister’s Black Veil” uses third-person point of view, which means an omniscient—or all-knowing—narrator tells the story. Because the narrator is all-knowing, readers are privy to feelings or thoughts of more than one character. The omniscient narrator tells readers that the people, upon listening to Mr. Hooper’s sermon, “felt as if the preacher had crept upon them […] and discovered their hoarded inquiry of deed or thought” (3). The narrator also tells us that Mr. Hooper is “grieved […] to the very depth of his kind heart” when he is shunned by the people (10). However, despite being capable of reading the minds of the people and Mr. Hooper alike, the narrator is unable, or unwilling, to reveal the meaning of the veil until Mr. Hooper reveals it himself. The narrator expresses similarly limited knowledge of Mr. Hooper’s thoughts when describing his response to Reverend Clark’s inquiry of whether he is ready to move from Earth to eternity: “Father Hooper at first replied merely by a feeble motion of his head; then, apprehensive, perhaps, that his meaning might be doubtful, he exerted himself to speak” (12). The word “perhaps” suggests that Mr. Hooper’s deepest thoughts cannot truly be known, thus reinforcing the tragedy of Mr. Hooper’s veil, for in wearing it, Mr. Hooper isolates himself not only from the people but also from us, the readers.
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By Nathaniel Hawthorne
