In "The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mr. Hooper, a reverend in the town of Milford, surprises his parishioners by wearing a gaudy black veil one Sunday. The city is visibly frightened, but still curious, by his disturbing appearance and deeply affected by his sermon on the secret sin. "A subtle power was infused in his words. Every member of the congregation, the most innocent girl and the hard-breasted man, felt as if the preacher had crept upon them, behind his terrible veil, and had discovered the 'iniquity of their accumulated actions or thoughts' (2432). Parishioners expect Hooper to wear the veil for only one day and then remove it, having used his face to make his point about secret sin, but are surprised to find that he does not remove the veil after that Sunday, but in fact, at he will wear it until his death. The town begins to gossip about why the parish priest wears the crepe, questioning his purity and distancing himself from his person. When the parson's intention, Elizabeth, asks him to stop his stupidity and remove the veil, he sadly refuses and Elizabeth reluctantly leaves him. The story ends with the death of the Parson, isolated by his choice to wear the veil with only the dying and dead finding comfort in his presence, proclaiming that on every face he sees a black veil. In "The Minister's Black Veil," Nathaniel Hawthorne seeks to show the flaws of a society in which its members wear and create false facades, illustrating how it separates and alienates the individual from society, peers, reality, and spirituality. Veil, Parson Hooper uses her black veil as a way to represent an individual in verse his hidden sin. She sees every member of her community as a...... middle of paper ......or despise the veil is justified in their dislike, because it is unnatural, shocking and sudden. It would be strange for them to react any other way. Everyone except Elizabeth fails to ask him to remove the veil and the deeper meaning behind it. How could they expect him to give in to demands that they themselves had never expressed? Perhaps if the veil bothered his parishioners so much, they would have become more proactive in revealing their secret sins and thus relieved the parish priest of his burden. Neither side is "right" so to speak, but it is important to note that the parish priest acted out of a desire to help the parishioners while the parishioners did not act at all. Works Cited Lauter, Paul, Richard Yarborough and John Alberti. "The Minister's Black Veil." Heath's Anthology of American Literature. vol. B. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pub., 2009. 2431-439. Press.