The Minister's Black Veil

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Hawthorne’s Idea of Alienation by Creed in “The Minister’s Black Veil” What are the standards a society should go by to judge one’s moral values? Is it by basing it off a first impression or taking it upon yourself to understand what that person is trying to say through their actions? Standards can be set high or low, or even good vs. evil. Either way it is all based upon a society’s way of belief. A society may look at class, gender, or race, but a main form of judgment comes from a person’s creed. Though in “The Minister’s Black Veil”, you realize that though people have standards it can be wrongful to alienate someone before looking in themselves. In the “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Nathaniel Hawthorne, uses tone to convey that Reverend…show more content…
Reverend Hooper’s alienation has revealed the direct moral values of the society that has judged him based on his own secret hidden iniquities. A society is made up of many different factions where people are separated. People tend to place judgement on the conditions of others to which they don’t understand, but don’t even understand their own problems. The people of Milford are people that judge not by character but by their moral values that they have grown up in. By the author, Montbriand, who quoted, “E. Earle Stibitz ingeniously connects the two levels of the veil’s meaning: ‘Out of the first level of meaning, the calling of alienation to the truths of man’s proneness to the sin of concealment, rises the second level, the minister’s sin making his demonstration all-important; and this second level, with its irony, absorbs the first, creating the dominant theme’” (Montbriand). The idea of the levels that the veil can be broken down by Montbriand clearly explains why such judgement is brought by a society’s alienated personage. It shows not only the theme but the use of creed being the source as in part “the calling of alienation to the truths man’s proneness to the sin of concealment” (Montbriand). Hawthorne also says, “Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil?”, and “I looked around me and lo! on every visage a Black Veil” (Hawthorne). The alienation of Reverend Hooper allows the audience to understand that s society such as a Puritan society holds certain orders as different class. The Milford society is shown as only having poor moral values. For if they do begin to understand the true reason of the reverend’s solitary confinement they might would feel rebuked for their own iniquities and sinful ways. Reverend Hooper’s alienation from and because of his
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