In both The Minister’s Black Veil and The Scarlet Letter, there are many similarities between the two, portraying the views of Mr. Hawthorne. The stories are both centered around Puritan societies and how they view sins. In both stories the main characters, Hester in The Scarlet Letter and Mr. Hooper in The Minister’s Black Veil, wore symbols to show they committed sins. In The Scarlet Letter Hester was forced to wear a red A to show that she had committed the sin of adultery. “The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne's bosom. Here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her” (14.9). Which is very similar to that of The Minister’s Black Veil, where Mr. Hooper voluntarily dons a black veil. In the story he tells his wife Elizabeth, "If it be a sign of mourning,...I, perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to …show more content…
In both stories, these symbols of secret sin separated the main characters from the members of the town. In the scarlet letter, Hester was forced to walk through the streets, paraded in front of the townspeople to make an example out of her. “Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might reckoned a journey of some length; for, haughty as her demeanor was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung in the street for them all to spurn and trample upon,” (2.17). In the Minister’s Black Veil, Mr. Hooper was feared by all of his parishioners. No one wanted to confront him because they feared the piece of crape that shielded his face from the world, as stated in the short story. “All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world: it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman's love, and kept him in that saddest of all prisons, his own heart; and still it lay upon his face, as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber, and shade him from the sunshine of eternity,” (paragraph