The Minister’s Black Veil—Nathaniel Hawthorne

Few stories in American literature have been given the scrutiny of this one by Hawthorne. Researchers will find very little trouble in gathering dozens upon dozens of interpretations upon this story. What is perhaps most intriguing is the lengths that various critics will go to in order to strip this story of its most obvious interpretation.
First, let’s briefly summarize the story. The tale opens on a Sunday with morning services about to begin. All seems normal until Rev. Hooper exits the rectory to preach the service, inexplicably wearing a double fold of black crepe over the upper half of his face. The appearance of the minister greatly disturbs his parishioners. After a funeral and a wedding that day, Rev. Hooper meets with his fiancée, Elizabeth. When he refuses to set the veil aside for her, she breaks off the engagement although remaining quite devoted to him.
Years pass by as Hooper maintains the black veil. He becomes a more effective preacher during these years although remaining an enigma to his flock. Finally, as he lies on his deathbed, another minister, Rev. Clark, urges him to finally remove the veil. Hooper refuses, aided by Elizabeth, and dies covered by the black cloth.
In order to understand this story, one must begin and end the interpretation—or at least its heart—with the veil. Why does Hooper wear the veil? Is he hiding something or hiding from something? Alternately, is the veil a tool for concealment or for signification. The most obvious interpretation, and the one that most of the congregation apparently assume to be true, is that Hooper has committed some horrible sin and wears the veil in order to hide his face in shame. Edgar Allan Poe theorized that Hooper had committed a sexual sin with the young woman whose funeral he performs that first day. While such is a possibility, it, I believe, takes the story to a too-literal level. On the other hand, the veil might be a tool to shield Hooper’s eyes from other people.
Looking at the alternate scheme of understanding the veil, we might wonder if Hooper wears to veil to cover something up or to reveal something. Perhaps the veil indicates his awareness of sin. If so, then we might profitably ask whether the sin signified is his own or someone else’s?
Some readers have picked up on a Biblical usage of veils. In II Corinthians 3:13, Paul contrasts the boldness of the believer with Moses, who veiled himself in Exodus 34 after meeting with God on Sinai. As Moses descended from his meetings with God, the glory would gradually fade away from his face. Moses delivered God’s message to the people with an uncovered, radiant face, and then covered his face until the next meeting. As tantalizing as this reference is, one might find it difficult to connect Hooper’s view of the veil with this Mosaic veiling. It seems clear in Hawthorne’s story that the key to the veil is sin. The key to the veil in the Moses story is the glory and radiance of God. These seem to be two wholly different things.
In fact, though, these two things are not nearly as separate as they might appear at first blush. Moses veiled his face in order to hide the contrast between his radiant, God-drenched face and a merely human face. The key to understanding sin in its Biblical form is to see it as separation from God, a deviation from holiness.
Hooper’s veil, whatever its origin, has the effect of emphasizing man’s lack of holiness and separation from God. This is the sort of emphasis that runs through all of Paul’s writings. In fact, this is the realization that emerges in Paul’s Damascus Road experience. Paul, convinced of his righteousness, travels toward Damascus in order to expose the failings of others. Upon encountering Christ on the road, Paul’s eyes are blinded—a sort of veiling—yet his self-perception is opened. He sees himself as a sinful man, hopeless but for the salvation offered through Christ Jesus. We only know these things, of course, because Paul has related them, either directly or by way of Luke. Recall that his fellow travelers could not hear distinct words during the event.
Does Hooper experience his own Damascus Road event? Hawthorne, by his ambiguity, ensures that readers will not know without assistance from Hooper, and the minister is not willing to testify of whatever experience has placed the veil on his face.
What places the veil on Hooper’s face? That is a cause that we will never know. Perhaps Hawthorne intends this ambiguity to allow the reader to interpret it through his own lens. I am reminded here of the many reactions I have witnessed to Paul’s II Corinthians 12 account of his thorn in the flesh. Since Paul leaves the thorn extremely ambiguous, many readers have interpreted it according to their own weaknesses.
In the end, Hawthorne’s story stands as a latter-day account of the Puritan view of man’s sinfulness and need for God. Any interpretation that leaves this aspect out of “The Minister’s Black Veil” is hiding something—or perhaps hiding from something.

Self-Reliance—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Few thinkers have been as significant in forming the American way of thought as has Emerson. Look beneath the surface of the can-do American spirit, and you’ll find a subterranean river of Emerson flowing along, carrying both commerce and social thought. For the Christian reader, a quick look at just one of Emerson’s essays, “Self-Reliance,” will provide ample evidence that this man’s influence has not been one that has taken our people in the direction of holiness. In fact, one mid-sized quotation should make the case quite convincingly.
“On my saying, ‘What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?’ my friend suggested,--‘But these impulses may be from below, not from above.’ I replied, ‘They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.’ No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it.”
What nonsense! And it brings us to my biggest complaint against Emerson aside from his wholly secular outlook. Many critics will note and laud Emerson’s “aphoristic” style. In other words, his writing tends to sound like a collection of witty and wise sayings. Read through some of his essays and you will stumble upon various phrases that you’ve heard before. Essentially, Emerson worked in sound bites in an era long before electronic communication made sound bites important. This aphoristic style helps to explain the popularity of the writer; however, it also stands as one of his greatest weaknesses. Rather than taking statement and thoroughly working through it, exploring it, testing it, and weighing it in the balance, Emerson simple lays a claim on the table and moves on to the next, often resorting solely to his own force of personality as evidence for his assertion.
In short, Emerson quite demonstrably commits the very transgression that the secularists accuse believers of committing: believing things on faith and without any corroboration.
Why, in Emerson’s thought, is “No law sacred to me but that of my nature”? He offers no evidence, no argument. It is so, apparently, simply because he states it. It seems correct to Emerson; thus, since his inborn law is the only relevant law for him, it must be true. Such is, of course, an example of circular reasoning that would be dismissed as unrealistically contrived were we to place it in logic textbook, but for Emerson, such thinking has ensured nearly two centuries of importance.
Would Emerson then not applaud the actions of a serial killer who simple follows his own nature? If not, why? Perhaps he would argue that the serial killer is not indeed following his own nature, but if that is the case, then how can he know? How can he know that his own nature is not in some way perverted.
Later in the essay, Emerson trumpets his view of God, a pantheistic being that is in and among all. While he uses some of the terminology of orthodoxy, he changes those things meanings to make them conform to his inward-dwelling God. Let us consider his thoughts on prayer:
“Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good.”
That all sounds quite lovely, but what, precisely, does it mean? We learn as we continue the same passage.
“But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness.”
Therefore, if I pray for my children’s health, I am being mean and thieving. If I pray, as instructed by Jesus himself, for “our daily bread,” I am supposing dualism. But of course I do suppose dualism. I suppose that God is God and that man is man. These two are not the same. To suppose otherwise is would require a good bit of evidence that Emerson simply does not offer. The universe, in Emerson’s view, is a unified and interconnected thing, with the mind of God and the mind of humans linked in and among all things, simply because Emerson says so. A page or so later, he declares “men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.” Emerson’s own creed, however, he sets up as healthy and sound. Why? Again, it’s simply because he declares this to be the case.
Emerson’s writings stand as a sort of secular scripture, espousing views that Christians will find largely objectionable. His greatest strength is in the powerful voice with which he shares his ideas; his greatest weakness lies in his assumption that this powerful voice is a sufficient force to prove his positions.