"He transformed himself into something horrible, just by hiding his face..." Let's take a journey back to the enchanting Puritan era to understand the content of The Black Veil by Hawthorne The minister's black veil. In this tale, Reverend Hooper, a young minister, unassuming and unremarkable in every way, suddenly dons a black veil, amid the shock and mystery of the small town in which he preaches. He becomes a pariah with his insistence on removing it, and loses his following and even his fiancée. She also insists on her deathbed to keep the veil in the grave. The great unsolved mystery, however, which remains unsolvable to both the reader and the citizens, is why the veil? Hawthorne leaves this open to interpretation, but in his typical way, leaves a probable opening to symbolism. “And behold! On every face a black veil!” says Reverend Hooper, pointing to a possible explanation: that he is representing something that all people nurture with a physical manifestation: the veil. Black veil 1But what could it represent? "The subject of the sermon referred to secret sin and those sad mysteries which we hide from our loved ones and which we would like to hide from our conscience, forgetting even that the Omniscient can detect them" The minister's sermon on the day she began wearing the veil was a secret sin. In this passage, and with this information, the narrator points us in the direction of the veil that represents "secret sin," which is a religious idea of ​​sin that we hide and pretend as if it doesn't exist. We all do this to some extent even now, right? Back then, in a time when appearances were paramount, it was very popular and a good topic to preach about in a seemingly perfect city (which is never what it seems). But... middle of paper ......for me the story was written first and foremost by Hawthorne. The lesson here for us might just be to throw away our black veils, so to speak, before it is too late. Black Veil 2Hawthorne is a good person to turn to for tales of sin and evil, and "The Minister's Black Veil" is no exception. The master of symbolism and allegory strikes again with a massive symbol, more unsolvable than a Rubik's cube. Even though we may search for an explanation - Edgar Allen Poe also interpreted this story - we are left with a sense of unsettling wonder similar to that of the city's inhabitants "What's up with that thing on her face? Of course, there are other explanations for the veil, and although I have taken the path often taken, it is because it seems to have the most credence of all the theories. Feel free to explore any other interpretation…