The Minister's Black Veil: The Parable's message and a personal moral lesson

 Hawthorne's short story The Minister's Black Veil, expresses a moral lesson in a very poetic way.  His main character, Reverend Hooper, is built to show in his parable how people must show their true colors and not be prejudiced against people based on superficial attributes.  As a way to illustrate this teaching to the reader, he gives Hooper a black veil to wear over his face save for the mouth area.  This single, insignificant strip of doubled-up cloth is all that is required to disturb the townspeople.  When they first see Hooper wearing the veil, they don't believe that it is their minister, but as he mounts the pulpit and begins the sermon, the people of the town start to think he has gone mad.  This scene is depicting exactly what Hawthorne is trying to express.

The townspeople are-- throughout the story-- judging Hooper for the donning of his piece of black cloth;  the men do not talk to him, the women stop whatever they're doing and stare at him, even the children stop playing their games and scream, running away.  Hooper's wife Elizabeth is the only one to stay loyal, but she leaves him after he refuses to take off his veil; she comes back to him in the declining days of his life as his maid of death.  On his deathbed, the new Reverend Clark begs Hooper to take off his veil.  Hooper refuses and scolds his visitors, telling them why he wears this veil.  "Why do you tremble at me alone?  Tremble also at each other!  Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil.?  What, but the mystery which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so awful?  When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his best beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from 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!".

Hooper dies after he states his piece, but it leaves a deep moral lesson to his congregation, and the reader.  This parable definitely leaves a scoring mark on the idea of how easy it is to judge based on superficial traits.

I normally am the therapist of my social circles and family, and normally what I do is give them practical and moral advice and lessons.  There is one story that definitely stands out from the rest-- very similar to The Minister's Black Veil-- that I had taught a friend of mine.    Last year I met a freshman named Jeremias who had dressed a certain way, acted a certain way, listened to certain music, and talked to certain people.  I learned that this behavior was to try and "fit in" with other social circles; this sadly did not help at all.  He was chastised for how he looked and how shy he was around other people.  When he talked to me, I wasn't judgmental like my classmates, and I learned that he was an entirely different person who was far more interesting and colorful than he let most people know.

I worked on helping him let his actual self out so that he may gain new friends and live a happier life.  By this year he had fully embraced himself and that he need not hide himself and express who he truly is.  This is definitely a situation that had a more happier ending than Hooper's lifelong lesson of non-discrimination, which ended in a dark and angry theme.