In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil”, the author chooses to mask the character of the minister with the black veil to construct an allegory that would compare sin concocted by imagination with unrecognized sin of one’s self. With the story being set in the Puritan time period of the settlement of New England, as nearly all of Hawthorne’s stories are, the reader can logically infer a certain set of value …showed first 75 words of 667 total…

…showed last 75 words of 667 total…the veil on his face, but more likely it is simply left on in the rush to bury the man who brought to light such a less than virtuous shortcoming. Like so many of Hawthorne’s stories, the Minister’s Black Veil personifies the fallible nature of a people so dedicated to living a life free of sin, when in fact they are simply ignoring the vices that rest under their own pillows. Bibliography none