The Minister's Black Veil? Or a veil upon all our souls?

Like Kristi, I have greatly enjoyed reading this darker stories. I get caught up in them, in the way they pull my imagination in until I am can feel what each person is feeling and chills go up and down my spine as I try to understand just where the authors are coming from.

In this story, I was drawn to the way the minister accepted the people around him were going to shy away from his black veil, still insisting upon wearing it even when his wife refused to have anything to do with him. The description of his life after he began wearing the veil, and continued wearing it even after it caused so many negative reactions made me feel sympathy and pride for him as he continued with his resolve. His accusations on his death bed of them judging him for wearing his veil on the outside when everyone has a veil on their soul that they hide from others, shows a dark side of life that is still very true today.

The thoughts of the people around him, constantly questioning the meaning of the veil, and providing their own reasons for it and yet still going to him for ministering and other things needed in their life, while running when they saw him on a day to day basis, shows the guilt that the veil brought to them, but also the profound need for forgiveness from some high being. Mr. Hooper's own avoidance of his appearance also shows a denial that he himself felt even as he wore his "secret sin" where everyone could see it.

Hawthorne's use of the wind repeatedly throughout the story saying that it was understood to even avoid what could be hidden beneath the veil, provides the reader with an understanding of just how grotesque the people saw the veil. To accuse nature of avoiding something is to almost call it perverse, providing yet another vivid example of how the veil was effecting everyone around it. "Turning nature on its head" in more than one way.