Uncertainty is a very unsettling feeling for the human psyche to manage. Nathaniel Hawthorne explores how insecurity can overwhelm even the most sensible people in his book The Minister’s Black Veil. Mr. Hooper isolated himself from his community with a simple piece of cloth which in turn inspired a hysteria that infected everyone. While using the veil as a punishment for unknown sins he also inspired his congregation to reexamine their own morals. The …showed first 75 words of 961 total…

…showed last 75 words of 961 total…throughout the citizens of paid dividends that they did not even realize. Those who lived sinful lives were as effected by his veil as those who were pious. His dream for everyone to drop their veils may never happen but a seed was planted in a small society to at least try. The equality that the anxiety over his veil evoked helped to get Mr. Hooper’s point across without ever having to fully explain.