After reading The Minister's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne, I was left in shock. The story caught me off guard at the end. I was sure that he would remove the veil on his death bed, but he still wouldn't yield. His last words really struck a cord with me.
"I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!"
Hawthorne is saying something very profound about the Puritans of New England. The Puritans were known for their very religious and moral ways of going about life. Hawthorne is saying that this was all a front, that their lives were not truly as religious and moral as they seemed. The minister realized this as a young man, and stuck with this realization throughout his life. No matter what it took, he would not removed the veil because no one in the community removed theirs. They would sacrifice anything not to remove it, yet they shunned him for not removing his veil. He made it literal instead of figurative.
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