In the end of "The Minister's Black Veil," the townspeople fear the Reverend Mr. Hooper because of the ambiguity of secret sin and sorrow which envelops him with his refusal to remove his veil.
Those who attend Mr. Hooper's final moments "shrink from one another in mutual fright" as the minister refuses to remove his veil even as he dies. As he falls back, he utters these dreadful words,
Why do you tremble at me alone?... Tremble also at each other! ...when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin.
As he dies, Mr. Hooper tells those present, "I look around me, and lo! on every visage a Black Veil!"
Because they have been unable to see Mr. Hooper's face once the minister has donned the black veil, the congregation is unsure of how to perceive Mr. Hooper and the shadow he declares that he senses. Apprehensive about what the minister may perceive in them, people have avoided the minister, except for the occasions of certain services he renders as a clergyman because he is still perceived as very devoted to God:
in this manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in outward act, yet shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving, though unloved, and dimly feared; a man apart from men.
This description fits the town's opinion of Mr. Hooper at the end of the story.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
What is the town's opinion of Mr. Hooper at the end of "The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
No comments:
Post a Comment