our lives hiding behind this figurative veil of sin. In wearing the black veil, then, Mr. Hooper is making a very public point. Not only that, he's making the figurative literal.

In particular, Mr. Hooper's insistent wearing of the veil hints at the presence of a secret sin burning away inside his tortured soul and causing him no end of torment. The black veil provides a tantalizing clue as to what's going on inside his soul, which only makes the local townsfolk all the more eager to find out what his secret sin might be. But Mr. Hooper's not about to let on; and his refusal to remove the black veil, no matter how much it unnerves his congregation, is an outward sign of this.

"The Minister's Black Veil" conveys the idea that we are all sinful by nature, and yet we hide our sinful natures from one another in an attempt to portray ourselves as sinless.  In this way, we erect a figurative veil between ourselves and everyone else so that they may not see our sinfulness.  We even attempt to hide our sinfulness from God, to no avail.  Further, our insistence on hoarding our secret sins and hiding them from the world seriously injures our relationships because it means that we can never truly know or be known, fully, by anyone else.  Even the most loving partners exist with this veil between them.

When Mr. Hooper's fiancee, Elizabeth, confronts him with the rumors which are circulating about why he wears the veil, he says, 

"If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough [...] and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the same?"

With this question, Mr. Hooper admits that he has the weight of secret sin on his soul and that he knows every other human being to bear this weight as well, including Elizabeth.  Even on his deathbed, when others tremble at his unwillingness to remove the veil, he says,

"Tremble also at each other!  [....] 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!"

With these lines, Mr. Hooper has been more open about the meaning of the black veil than he ever has been, publicly, before.  (He did reveal a great deal to Elizabeth alone.)  He insists that he is not a monster because he has worn this veil, and it is ironic that he has been shunned because of this physical symbol that means nothing on its own but only acquires meaning because of what it represents.  The veil is meant to symbolize the sinful monstrosity in each of us, our capacity for dissembling, and our desire to hide our true natures from each other and from God.  He sees a figuratively black veil on each face because every person does this; every person tries to hide their true natures.  

You have asked an excellent question because it identifies what a versatile symbol the black veil that Mr. Hooper dons is. There are a variety of symbolic meanings that can be applied to the black veil, and it is never precisely specified what the specific meaning is. However, the veil could symbolise Hooper's own secret sin, the sins of his parishioners, and/or Hooper's and everyone's isolation from God. Consider Hooper's last words:

"I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!"

Hooper here suggests that people's own sins cause them to react with fear and horror to the veil, making the symbol all the more awful. This is an impression that is certainly borne out by the story, for when the a group of churchgoers try to confront Hooper about his veil, they are unable to:

Thus they sat a considerable time, speechless, confused, and shrinking uneasily from Mr. Hooper's eye, which they felt to be fixed upon them with an invisible glance.

It is implied that the veil in some way condemns them for their own sin or confronts them with a truth that they do not want to face, and thus they are unable to confront Hooper directly.

For Elizabeth, the fiancee of Hooper, it is clear that she at first interprets the veil as a symbol of some secret sin of Hooper:

"Beloved and respected as you 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!"

Yet, by the end of the story it is clear that her continued presence nursing him indicates a change of mind - she has come to understand the symbol as something that applies not just to Hooper but to all humanity.

It is clear therefore that the meaning of the veil is ambiguous, and it certainly changes through the story and depending on the character who is trying to interpret this symbol. However, it can be implied that Hooper himself has donned this veil as a symbol of the universal condition of humanity that will remain separate from God until their death.

During the first sermon that Mr. Hooper gives once he begins to wear the veil, he addresses "secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them."  In other words, Mr. Hooper talks about the fact that every human being has a secret, sinful nature; however, we try to hide that nature from all our fellows -- indeed, we try to forget about it ourselves as well -- and we can even delude ourselves into thinking that God, himself, is unaware of our secret sins.  And although Mr. Hooper delivers the sermon in much the same way as he ever has, gently and beseechingly rather than violently and threateningly, his audience considered it to be "the most powerful effort that they had ever heard from their pastor's lips [....] and [...] the hearers quaked."  Thus, it must bear the stamp of truth because they feel it to be more persuasive and evocative than any other sermon of his that they have heard. 

The veil's symbolism, then, is the subject of this sermon.  It is a tangible representation of our desire to hide our true natures from the world.  If one fears revealing their secret sinfulness to the world, it is as though they hold up a figurative veil between themselves and everyone else.  Therefore, when Mr. Hooper discusses this sinfulness that we insist on trying to hide, he is really explaining what the veil, itself, means.

I believe you are referring to Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "The Minister's Black Veil." In this story, in addition to Mr. Hooper's veil, another veil is referred to when the narrator describes the visitors at the young maiden's funeral:

The people trembled, though they but darkly understood him when he prayed that they, and himself, and all of mortal race, might be ready, as he trusted this young maiden had been, for the dreadful hour that should snatch the veil from their faces.

Now, of course, the people are not wearing literal, physical, veils like Mr. Hooper's, and so we must consider what Mr. Hooper means when he refers to the veils on their faces. His veil seems to represent some secret sinful nature, as this is what he preaches about on the very first day he wears it, and the parishioners feel as though he has discovered their secret sinfulness as well. We often try to hide the fact that we are "sinners" or do bad or wrong things, but the fact is that we are human, and so we do these things.

However we hide them from one another, though, we cannot hide them from God. This seems to be confirmed with Mr. Hooper tells his fiancee that "'There is an hour to come . . . when all of us shall cast aside our veils.'" Again, he is the only one wearing a physical veil, and he seems to refer, here, to God's judgement after one's death; in that moment, the individual cannot hide their sins anymore.

Later, after performing the wedding ceremony, Mr. Hooper catches a glimpse of his face with the veil on it, in a mirror, and he is overwhelmed by horror. He rushes out into the night, "For the Earth, too, had on her Black Veil," the narrator tells us. Here, the narrator seems to refer to the nighttime, but it could also be that nighttime is when people often do bad or sinful deeds, because the darkness shields them from others' eyes.

The phrase "lo! On every visage a Black Veil!" can be found towards the end of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Gothic story "The Minister's Black Veil", when Minister Hooper is on his deathbed and being persuaded by Reverend Clark to remove the black veil that had been covering his face for a long period of time now, causing fear and discomfort in his community.

Reverend Hooper rejects the proposition. He argues that it is interesting how he mystery of what the veil "could" be hiding is actually what drives men, women, and children away; that, if people did not have a naturally wicked mind which incites them to think and wonder about the wickedest things, they would see that the piece of clothing is merely what it is: a piece of black crepe. It is the soiled conscience and imagination of humanity what gives it a bad meaning. 

Moreover, Reverend Hooper opens up about what the people around him may be hiding, not behind a piece of black crepe, but behind a kind face, or a fake smile, or a well-created kind personality. In all, Rev. Hooper makes everyone aware of one thing: everybody wears a mask, and our faces are merely that mask beneath which anything lurks. And some people hide behind that mask some horrid and evil things that no one would ever suspect. However, how hypocritical it is from the parishioners to fear a piece of clothing: could it be that, deep inside, we all fear the things we each hide from society? Hence, Rev. Hooper further says

"Why do you tremble at me alone? Tremble also at each other!"..."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...I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!

Concisely, Rev. Hooper makes an open accusation to every sanctimonious or hypocritical man or woman in society and reminds them that everybody, in all, wear a veil of lies and secrets.

One way in which Mr. Hooper benefits from the veil is that he can now affect his parishioners to a much greater extent than he ever did before he put it on.  The narrator tells us that, on the day he first wears the veil, his sermon was "marked by the same characteristics of style and manner" as his sermons always were, and yet

there was something, either in the sentiment of the discourse itself, or in the imagination of the auditors, which made it greatly the most powerful effort that they had ever heard from their pastor's lips.

Despite the fact that Mr. Hooper speaks as mildly as usual, this sermon is somehow more persuasive, more poignant than any he has delivered before.  In fact, every listener "felt as if the preacher had crept upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought."  They feel more understood by him than they ever have; it's as though he somehow knows them more fully, and this feeling makes them extremely uncomfortable because there is something they wish to hide.  Moreover, when he goes to pray over the body of a recently deceased girl,

The people trembled, though they but darkly understood him when he prayed that they, and himself, and all of mortal race, might be ready, as he trusted this young maiden had been, for the dreadful hour that should snatch the veil from their faces.

We begin, now, to understand what this veil represents.  That his audience feels that he, with his veil, has "discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought" and that it is death, alone, that will "snatch the veil" away, helps us to see that the veil must have to with our secret sinful thoughts or actions.  Our pretense -- portraying ourselves to the world as sinless -- separates us from one another, preventing us from truly knowing each other, and will only be lifted when we die.  If the thing we fear most is the revelation of our sinfulness to another person, then we can never realize that we are all sinners (a popular Hawthorne theme), and it is our unnecessary deception that ultimately -- and unnecessarily -- alienates each of us.

Furthermore, if Mr. Hooper were to just come out and accuse each of them of being a secret sinner who purposefully hides their true, sinful, natures, his message would seem a lot less palatable to his listeners. Wearing the veil, however, not only engages them in some critical thinking about why he would wear it and what it represents but also precisely conveys the point that we all do this.  Even the minister hides his true nature, recognizes the universality of the pretense, and STILL doesn't have the nerve to tell them what the veil means.  Therefore, this need to present ourselves as sinless creatures seems to be a real deep-seated human impulse.  Not even the minister can escape it.

The first explanation for the veil offered by a parishioner is from Goodman Gray, who says, "'Our parson has gone mad!" as he follows Mr. Hooper on the first morning the minister dons it. The narrator asks, as Mr. Hooper enters the church and begins to speak, "Did he seek to hide [his face] from the dread Being whom he was addressing?" It seems, then, that people even started to wonder if their parson was attempting to hide his face from God for some reason.

After the service, people gather around, clearly talking about Mr. Hooper's awful and strange veil: some people think "that there was no mystery at all, but only that Mr. Hooper's eyes were so weakened by the midnight lamp as to require "a shade." Still, another man, the village physician, believes that "'Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hooper's intellects." He believes that Mr. Hooper is now suffering from some kind of delusion or declension of his mind.

The delegation sent by the church to find out the rationale behind the veil feels some vague awareness that it is "the symbol of a fearful secret between him and them." When Elizabeth, Mr. Hooper's fiancee, comes to inquire after the failure of the delegation, she asks him,

What grievous affliction hath befallen you [...] that you should thus darken your eyes forever?

She believes the veil can be attributed, perhaps, to an illness or some other cause of suffering. She presses him further, saying,

Beloved and respected as you are, there may be whispers that you hide your face under the consciousness of secret sin.

Apparently, these rumors have already been spreading in the village, and it embarrasses her a little to repeat them. During their conversation, when she's tried to get him to give her a direct answer about the veil's meaning, she even begins to think that his odd behavior is "a symptom of mental disease." Eventually, Elizabeth does seem to figure out what the veil means, but she never addresses it verbally; she only asks Mr. Hooper to show her his face one more time, but he will not.

From then on, some people considered it to be

merely an eccentric whim, such as often mingles with the sober actions of men otherwise rational, and tinges them all with its own semblance of insanity.

In the story, Mr. Hooper never explicitly explains why he began to wear the black veil. The first sermon he delivers after he puts it on has to do with

secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them.

Thus, the veil seems to be connected to this idea that each of us hides our sinful natures from others, though Mr. Hooper never verbally connects the two for his congregation.

Later, when Mr. Hooper speaks to his fiancee, Elizabeth, she ask him about he veil's meaning directly. Although he does not answer her directly, he does say,

If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough. . . and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the same?

Such a response to her queries connects the veil to this idea that we all hide something crucial of ourselves that prevents us from being truly known or understood by anyone else.

Finally, on Mr. Hooper's deathbed, when another minister suggests that he remove the veil, he says,

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!

Again, then, although he never comes right out and explains the meaning of the veil, Mr. Hooper connects it to this idea of secret sin one final time, insisting that the only thing that differentiates him from everyone else is that he has donned the physical veil as a means of representing the figurative veil we all wear, and for this reason he has been shunned.

Mr. Hooper’s black veil is just plain weird, and to show up unexpectedly with it on one day is just as bizarre.  People in his congregation cannot figure it out, and even as Hooper preaches about sin in the Sunday service, the question of the meaning of the veil overshadows the sermon’s message.  Rumors start to buzz around town, and people are afraid of Hooper.  They refuse to walk alongside him, and children begin to mimic him.  When he refuses to reveal his face to his fiancé, Elizabeth, she leaves him and breaks off the engagement.  Hooper remains a lonely man full of conflict, and the veil’s message is not getting through to people because he refuses to explain it.  Perhaps if he explained its purpose, people would be able to understand its symbolic meaning: that we all have sin that we hide.  Instead, it just isolates him and causes a rift with his congregation.  Only those on their death beds who are ready to confess their sins seem to understand the veil’s meaning.

Hooper needed to be more forthright about the veil and what he was attempting to show the congregation.  If he had done that, perhaps his life wouldn’t have been so sad and tragic, and the town’s people could have learned from him.  Instead, his bold move is for naught as the mystery of the black veil outweighed its intentions.  As readers, we end up seeing Hooper not as a hero who changes people’s hearts or faith, but as a failure whose purpose was never understood.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote that the symbolism of the black veil was a matter to be determined by the reader, who would bring a particular perspective on matters such as sin, guilt, pride, and concealment to Hawthorne's short story. This aligns the reader with the townspeople of Milford, who are baffled by the veil and have to attempt to understand why Mr. Hooper would wear such a thing. The veil is described as covering the minister's face except for his mouth and chin, meaning that his speech is not impeded and that he can still smile, as he does several times in the story, though Hawthorne generally remarks that his smile is a sad one.

Hawthorne tells the reader that the veil probably does not affect the minister's sight much, though his own eyes cannot be seen. However, he would see everything around him in darker hues, as though he were wearing sunglasses. The veil may, therefore, represent the grimness of the Puritan vision of humanity, which sees darkness everywhere. It could also, however, be a symbol of the reality of sin, as the universal darkness which people normally hide in their hearts and try not to show in their faces. To prevent such dissimulation, Mr. Hooper could have decided to remind himself and all those around him of this darkness by ensuring that it is never absent from his face.

At the beginning of the story, Hawthorne says that the veil Mr. Hooper has adopted "probably did not intercept his sight, further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things." At the end, immediately before he dies, Hooper himself adds that when he looks around him (through the veil), he sees a similar veil on every face. Although this is clearly meant figuratively, it is also literally true that the veil darkens the faces of others from the minister's perspective.

Hooper also tells his wife that the veil is a symbol, though he does not say what it symbolizes, an omission which is clearly deliberate, to give the reader some latitude in deciding the nature of the symbolism. One answer is that the veil symbolizes the darkness of human nature and human desires.

Another, which he suggests in his final speech, is that it shows our essential separation from each other. Since we do not tell even those we love most, the true contents of our hearts and minds, it is a small step from this dissimulation to covering up the face entirely, leaving others to guess even at the imperfect reflection of our thoughts and feelings which the face discloses.

The symbolism, like the veil itself, works in two ways. It completely obscures the minister's face, forcing others to guess what he is thinking and feeling, but it also darkens his view of them. The symbolism, therefore, seems to comprehend both the darkness of human nature and the fundamental solitariness of and separation between people.

It is interesting that Mr. Hooper wears his veil to preside over both a wedding and a funeral, and his veil impacts the audience at both events greatly. Hawthorne is clearly trying to show that the symbolic significance of the veil and the secret sin that it represents stretches to both times of sadness and times of joy. The way in which the veil taints this joyful event is made clear through the following description:

Such was its immediate effect on the guests, that a cloud seemed to have rolled duskily from beneath the black crape, and dimmed the light of the candles. The bridal pair stood up before the minsiter. But the bride's cold fingers quivered in the tremulous hand of the bridegroom, and her deathlike paleness caused a whisper, that the maiden who had been buried a few hours before, was come from her grave to be married.

If this were not enough to ruin the wedding of this poor couple, Mr. Hooper than proceeds to catch sight of himself in a mirror, and so terrified by his image swathed in the black veil, runs out in fear and terror. Let us just focus, however, on the way in which the black veil acts as a clear and obvious symbol of something that most people like to ignore and deny. The visible reminder that it is of our secret sin disrupts even the most joyful of events, such as the wedding. What we like to repress and ignore is thus flaunted by such a symbol, which impacts everything.

Hawthorne deliberately leaves the most obvious question unanswered. Why does Mr. Hooper wear that black veil? Most people are afraid to ask the minister that question, perhaps because they are afraid he has some ugly scar or skin disease or eye affliction he wishes to conceal. The reader is drawn into the story by curiosity, hoping that sooner or later an explanation will be given by the narrator or by Hooper himself; but at the end of the story the question remains unanswered.

The only person who asks him directly why he insists on wearing the veil is Elizabeth, who felt she had a right to know his secret and to see his face because they were engaged to be married. But through the long scene in which they discussed the matter, the minister would not reveal the answer to that question. In two of his responses to her questions, the minister uses the word “if” three times.

"If it be a sign of mourning," replied Mr. Hooper, "I perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil."
"If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough . . . and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the same?"

Obviously he has no intention of telling her the truth—assuming that he even knows the truth himself.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an introverted, reclusive man. Proof is that when he graduated from Bowdoin College he spent more than twelve years in seclusion, devoting most of that time to writing. Since it is anybody’s guess as to why he created a character who wore a black veil throughout his life, a possible reason is that the Reverend Hooper, like Hawthorne, wanted to hide from the world. The veil was not intended to be a symbol or an admonition but a device to enable a hypersensitive man to appear in public when necessary yet to remain in hiding at the same time.

The idea for the story may have come to Hawthorne because he liked solitude and disliked the gossip and hypocrisy that were so much a part of life in a small town like Concord. A lot of his stories, including "Young Goodman Brown," show his poor opinion of people in general. In other words, Hooper may have been Hawthorne’s alter ego. Hawthorne himself would have liked to hide behind a veil. He chose the precarious career of a professional freelance writer because that was one way to earn a living without having to deal with people. One of Hawthorne's best stories is "Wakefield," and it too seems to suggest the secret desire or fantasy of the author to become virtually invisible--to be in the world but not part of the world.

But no one will ever know for sure why the minister wore that black veil, because Hawthorne wanted to leave his readers guessing.

The subject of Mr. Hooper's sermon on the day he first wears the veil was preached deliberately to cause the parishioners to reflect upon their own actions and doings. Hawthorne writes that, whether it was real or a product of the imagination of the people, the sermon

was tinged, rather more darkly than usual, with the gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper's temperament.

That, combined with the enigmatic (and creepy) thick, black veil covering his face throughout the sermon, surely must have helped to accentuate any discourse ever to be given. This particular sermon went hand in hand with the tone used by Hooper, as well as with the prop of the veil: It was about secret sins.

The subject had reference to secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them.

Clearly, the veil is an illustration of the speech. It hid its face the same way that all the parishioners presumably hide their secret sins behind the façade of righteousness and socially-acceptable actions that compose their social personas. The narrator goes on to say how the speech about secret sins seems to have touched a nerve in the audience members, who grasped their hands and clutched them against their chests in what the author calls an “unsought pathos” that seemed to suddenly take over the entire flock. This is a reflection of the state of the people’s consciences and how they quietly agreed with what the minister said.

Hawthorne's work in general is often focused upon moral ambiguity. He uses the setting of his ancestors' Puritan New England partly because this was a society in which severe punishments were carried out against "transgressors," not only those who "sinned" but more broadly against anyone not embracing the Calvinist version of Christianity of the English dissenters who founded New England. But what, Hawthorne seems to be asking, is actually moral or immoral?

The symbolism of Parson Hooper's black veil can be interpreted in different ways, but with regard to your question I would examine how it functions in relation to this question of the meaning of morality. Hooper could be using the veil as symbolic of his own sins, as if to tell his congregants that even he, their clergyman, must hide his own transgressions from others. Yet his announcement before his death that there is a kind of black veil on every man (and woman) would be a recognition of the universality of moral imperfection, or that the standards set up for "moral" conduct are impossible to meet. Hawthorne's theme here, as elsewhere in his oeuvre, focuses on hypocrisy. Those who accuse others of sinfulness are often the most sinful themselves, as in The Scarlet Letter. Hooper's veil is a kind of corrective to the accusatory manner of clergymen of that time and later, who threatened their congregants with hell fire if they strayed the slightest from the true path. In wearing the veil Hooper is saying that he, like every person, is a sinner.

But what, we might ask further, is Hooper's (and Hawthorne's) conception of what really constitutes "sin"? Hooper's veil implies, at least partly, that sin, if it is real, is the disconnection among people, the inability or unwillingness of too many to reach out to others and embrace them. That Hooper goes to his grave with the veil, and that his face molders under it, is Hawthorne's own pessimistic conclusion that, like Hooper himself, mankind as a whole has not solved this problem of the lack of genuine communion among people.

In explaining the meaning of the black veil, start with the meaning of its two parts. Blackness refers to darkness, both literal and symbolic. It refers to night, death, sin, depression, and loss. A veil hides someone and sets him or her off from the world. Combine them, and you get someone who is set off from the world through a barrier of pain, loss, sin, and death. For some in his congregation, this produces, we are told " a feeling of dread."  People tell stories about him.

However, Hawthorne notes, "Among all its bad influences, the black veil had the one desirable effect, of making its wearer a very efficient clergyman. 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."

He knows the dark, and so can counsel those there.

The topic of the first sermon that Mr. Hooper gives in this story is used by Nathaniel Hawthorne as a strong indicator of the symbolic significance for the black veil that he has donned. Note what we are told about this sermon and the description we are given about it:

The subject had reference to secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and darest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them.

Quite clearly, this is meant to be a very strong indication that the black veil that Mr. Hooper now wears is symbolic of his own secret sin, whatever that sin may be, and the way that it creates a barrier between him and others. This symbolic meaning is made explicit at the end of the story, when Mr. Hooper, on his deathbead, claims to see a veil covering every face when he looks at those around him. Secret sin is something that divides us from each other. The first sermon indicates that only Mr. Hooper is brave enough to face up to this fact, and the veil he dons is his symbol of this reality.

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?

After the Reverend Hooper dons a black veil that covers his face except for his mouth and chin, giving "a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things," his congregation is greatly disturbed, wondering, "Did he seek to hide it from the dread Being whom he was addressing?" and "more than one woman of delicate nerves was forced to leave the meetinghouse," reactions towards him change. Unnerved that they cannot see his face and his reactions to them, the mirror of the other turns inward for the congregation and their secret sins stir within them as they are forced to look at their own souls. This inward examination is, of course, deeper and more disturbing than one from others. Thus, the congregation are left to wonder what the minister really sees.

In "The Minister's Black Veil" the themes of Human Sin vs. Inability to Admit Sin, the Isolation of Conscience, and the Horrible Reality of Sin and How It Darkens Existence emerge as the Reverend Hooper forces others to examine their consciences and perceive their secret sins. Hooper wants his congregation to admit that they all wear masks of hypocrisy as they hide their sins,

"...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 feels that a life of sin is lived by all under a "veil" of reticence, hypocrisy, and obedience to their Puritanical cultural code of not admitting sin for fear of rejection and punishment. However, in his wearing of the black veil in order to stir the consciences of others, the minister has alienated himself from them, neglecting his congregation with his moral message and alienating himself from the joys of life. Thus, his own doubts about his soul cause Hooper moral conflict, as well.