Google The Minister’s Black Veil and you’ll find the same answer almost everywhere: Hooper wears the veil because of some secret sin. It’s the usual interpretation, and there is a reason why that’s what most people thing. His first sermon after he puts the black veil on is about secret sin, and the mysteries we hide from our nearest and dearest.
Do you believe everything Google tells you? Is there any evidence whatsoever in this story that Hooper had a secret sin? What is sin?
In all the stories and books we read together, we have to find the evidence in the story to support any thesis we create. So where’s the evidence of his secret sin?
“Well if it’s a secret, how would we know unless the secret is revealed?”
That’s a fair question. But then, what’s the purpose of this story if there is a secret sin? One of Hawthorne’s famous stories is the Scarlet Letter. There, Hester Prynne has a child and has to wear a scarlet letter on her dress because no one knows who the father is. It’s kind of like the black veil Hooper is wearing, so naturally, great thinkers make the connection.
But that’s now what happens in this story; there is no evidence of Hooper ever doing anything wrong. In fact, the opposite is true: he is a genuinely good man.
What does Hooper himself say about the black veil? When Elizabeth warns him there will be whispers that he hides his face under the consciousness of a secret sin, he replies that if he hides his face for sorrow, there is cause enough, “and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the same?” What’s he sad about?
Read that again carefully. He isn’t confessing any secret sin. He’s telling her that it doesn’t matter which one it is: sorrow or sin, every one of us has cause. And he calls the veil “a type and a symbol.” He tells us it stands for something.
But what? Well, that would be up to you to decide when you read this story with me.
So start by defining your words. Aristotle taught us that: if you don’t define your words, we have nothing in common to talk about.
Secret modifies sin, so what is sin? The dictionary says it’s an immoral act considered a transgression against divine law. And divine law is any body of laws perceived as coming from a transcendent source, such as the will of God. For example, the ten commandments. “thou shall not kill” is one of them, looked on as a kind of law. If you kill, you violate the law. We can debate that (i.e., self-defense), but killing is killing, and thou shall not is thou shall not. Period.
Sin, therefore, is based on beliefs in a higher power. That makes sense for Hooper the preacher. But if you don’t believe in divine law, or a higher power, you can’t believe in sin, and the story is still a classic with plenty to say to you. Besides, if you don’t believe in any law – divine or otherwise – you are an anarchist. Why are you reading with Jimmy anyway if anything goes?
There’s a second problem with secret sin. The third person narrator has Hooper accuse everybody. At the end he turns to the circle of people around his deathbed and says that on every face he sees a black veil. If the veil is Hooper’s private sin, why is it everywhere on every one? He isn’t talking about himself anymore. Does everyone have a “secret sin?”
Remember the story of Jesus and the woman about to be stoned? “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” Nobody threw one. In other words, they were all sinners.
We all also have secrets, sin or otherwise. Dostoevsky’s Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov says we are all guilty. That’s a tough idea the first time you see it. How can I be guilty of what someone else did? \
But think of the butterfly effect: if you were a little better than what you are, you might have changed a life. If someone sees you helping out a person crossing a street, how do you know what effect that has? If you see a father berating his son in public, what does that do to your own treatment of your children?
See my point?
Hooper mask is obviously hiding something. His face, for sure, but maybe – just maybe – he’s doing it for another reason. What that reason is remains for you to figure out. A story that’s a classic like this has many meanings, and this one doesn’t need sin to equal the veil if you accept that the veil equals your self. Those people in the meetinghouse might just be afraid of themselves. Afraid to look at themselves. Who they are. Who they have become.
Read The Minister’s Black Veil with Jimmy, and decide with the evidence for yourself.