To respond to this excellent question you need to think about
how the veil is interpreted by the parishioners of Mr. Hooper. It is clear from his encounter
with Elizabeth that some see his black veil as a symbol of some form of secret sin that he has
committed:
"Beloved and
respected as yo are, there may be whispers, that you hide your face under the consciousness of
secret sin. For the sake of your holy office, do away this
scandal!"
And yet, at the same time,
the horror that the black veil strikes in people indicates that when they are confronted with the
black veil they are also, in a way, confronted with their own secret sin that they would rather
forget about, ironically making him very successful in his
job:
By the aid of his
mysterious emblem - for there was no other apparent cause - he became a man of awful power, over
souls that were in agony for
sin.
Lastly, at his deathbed, we are
told that Mr. Hooper himself regards the black veil as a symbol of the individual's isolation
from God and from his fellow man because of his sinful state:
"When the friends hows his inmost heart to his friend;
the lover to his best beloved; when man does not vainly shrink fro the eye of his Creator
loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath
which I have lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black
Veil!"
Thus Mr. Hooper interprets his
black veil as a separation both from God and from others, but note how at the end he makes it
clear that this is a condition that all humans suffer.
Therefore I
think there are three main symbolic meanings in the tale. The symbol of the black veil is a very
rich one because people interpret it differently, but it is important to ask - what do you as a
reader think it symbolises?
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