Sacrifice In The Minister's Black Veil

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Everyone has made a sacrifice at one point in their lives. Sometimes we may forfeit opportunities in our life that may be difficult for others to perceive and understand at the time these sacrifices take place. In The Minister's Black Veil, the character, Reverend Hooper, uniquely and powerfully demonstrated a small gesture in which he wore a black veil to represent our hidden sins. By wearing the veil, he made a dramatic life-changing sacrifice, which in the end revealed its true value and meaning. By wearing the veil, Reverend Hooper’s image and life had dramatically changed in the story. Reverend Hooper was once a young, popular and admired figure in the Puritan society. “Mr. Hooper, a gentlemanly person, of about thirty, though still …show more content…
Instead of embracing him and the black veil’s symbolism. They became, “so wonder-struck…. that his greeting hardly met with a return (Hawthorne, 1)”. The people viewed him in a dark and an almost fearful way. The only person that was not disturbed by the veil was his fiance, Elizabeth. However, when she pleaded for him to take off the veil for the sake of the community, he refused to remove it. He told her that he had vowed to wear it forever. Elizabeth pleads with Reverend Hooper, “Beloved and respected as you are, there may be whispers that hide your face under the consciousness of secret sin. For the sake of your holy office, do away with this scandal (Hawthorne 4)!” She is worried that he is losing the love and respect from his people by wearing this foolish veil. She begs him to stop the non-sense, but he refuses. She then breaks off their engagement. The people in the Puritan community had also distanced themselves from the young minister. They did not trust him anymore and could not understand his meaning behind the veil. “A rumor of some unaccountable phenomenon had preceded Mr. Hooper into the meeting-house, and set all the congregation astir ( Hawthorne, 1).” Rather than his congregation concentrating on his sermon and the symbolic nature behind the veil, they immediately begin to form negative opinions of Hooper and that he is hiding something. “The black veil becomes a symbol of
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