Dover Beach Essay, Research Paper

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an interesting novelist. His writings usually contain some form of tension. For example, the tension between the minister and the people in the village in The Minister s Black Veil. Hawthorne also liked to focus on one particular character in his novels and show how different he/she is from others. One of those characters was the minister in The Minister s Black Veil. Hawthorne uses the minister to show how people treat a person, who looks a bit different, in other manner. Therefore, the minister is an extremely interesting character.

The minister was just one of the people in the village. There was nothing strange about him. People came to his services on Sundays and used his wisdom to guide them through life. However, one day it all changed. Just like a thunder out of a blue sky, the minister showed up with a black veil on his face. This act upset everybody. Some people even stopped going to his services. The minister became the main focus of the village because everyone wanted to know why he had this veil on. His work became more dramatic, and people with problems were drawn to him. At one point, the minister even scared himself. However, nobody knew the mystery of his black veil, and he finally dies with the black veil still attached on his face.

When one reads this story, he or she must get frustrated about not knowing what s behind the veil. What s the mystery? Why is the minister punishing himself by having a black veil on his face all the time? These are just a couple of question that has been raised about The Minister s Black Veil. After the minister put on his veil, nobody really treated him as a person. For example, people made fun of him and talked ugly things about him. Sadly, the only reason for that was because he had a black veil on his face.

Some people say that what we don t know, we treat as a bad thing. That s true if we consider this story. Everyone assumed he was hiding something, and it had to be bad. They thought that he had committed some crime, or he had some ugly sin on his back. Some people in the village thought that because the eyes are said to be the door to ones soul, he was closing that door by using the veil. It s interesting that his words became more powerful after he had put on the veil. In fact, they became so powerful that people came from long distance with their problems to hear him speak.

The minister really suffered because he used a black veil to cover his face. He became a lonely person, and the only person he loved wouldn t marry him because he didn t want to show his face. As a result, the minister spent his life alone. This raises a classic question. Is it the inner beauty one looks at, or is it the outer beauty?

The Minister s Black Veil is an interesting novel. It doesn t have a happy ending, and it raises many questions. For example, what does the black veil really stands for? Did he commit crime? By using the black veil, the minister is setting himself apart from everyone else, and it leads to his isolation from the community. I didn t find one answer to the question about why he s using a black veil to cover his face. Probably, there isn t just one answer. Perhaps Hawthorne wants us to find the answer that we like. Whatever the answer might be, the minister is truly an interesting character.

Bibliography

Wayne Franklin et al. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: Norton & Company, 1999.