Nathaniel Hawthorne

4 Pages 1100 Words

The Allegorical Nathaniel Hawthorne
For my research, I chose Nathaniel Hawthorne. The three short stories I read were, The Minister’s Black Veil, Young Goodman Brown, and Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment. I think that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories are interesting. The three that I read all had allegory and symbolism in them. All of the stories include some characteristic of death. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories seem to reply mainly about religion and the teaching of a lesson.
In The Minister’s Black Veil, I noticed a lot of allegory and symbolism. Th main character, Mr. Hooper, seems to be based upon a real person that Nathaniel Hawthorne must of read about. The black veil over the minister’s face symbolizes a secret that he isn’t afraid to show anymore. The minister is testing his closest friends and loved ones to see if they are trust worthy of him when he starts to wear the veil. When he starts wearing the veil, everyone shuns him and talks about him. Somehow, the death of a young woman seems to be the reason for him to be wearing the veil, according to some of the town’s people. They think that he may have had something to do with her death, and that was his way to show it by wearing the black veil for the first time the day of her funeral.
Everyone seems terrified of him with the veil on, but he cant figure out why. It isn’t until the wedding of a couple that he notices how dreary the veil really looks on him when he looks in the mirror at the reception. When his fiancée asks him to take off the veil and he says no so she leaves him, which leaves the minister alone with no one to comfort him. Th town’s men and women treat him as an outcast and will not socialize with the minister any longer. On his deathbed, he realizes that Elizabeth had always loved him, even after she left him, and was faithful to him through all the years. When he is asked to remove his veil, he tells Reverend Clark no. H...