The reverend loses everything that had meant something to him, including his fiancée, and even, though he does not realize it, his grasp upon reality. He insists upon wearing the black veil as an example of constant and unpardonable sin even as he prepares to cross the threshold between life and death. Although a fellow pastor, the Reverend Clark, urges Hooper to “let not this thing be….[L]et me cast aside this black veil from your face!,” a gesture that suggests pardon, Hooper refuses to let go of the veil and declares, “Never!…On earth, never!” (634). Like Brand, though, the reader has to question what the long-term effect of Hooper’s actions were; he neither accomplished spiritual transcendence for himself, nor for his community. In the final lines fo the story the narrator is careful to point out that “The grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave [and] the burial-stone is moss-grown….” (635).

In “Young Goodman Brown,” the title character is as beset by spiritual crisis as Brand and the Reverend. For reasons that are never entirely clear, Brown leaves his young wife and ventures into the forest to meet with a shady figure that is symbolic of the devil. He struggles mightily between this alliance with unpardonable sin and his alliance to his wife, his community, and to the memory of his forebears, who, he notes, “have been a race of honest men and good Christians” (611). Although Brown has numerous opportunities to turn back before he reaches and then participates in the strange ceremony in the forest, he does not retreat; he is drawn in by the devil’s revelations that he has “a very general acquaintance here in New-England,” and that he has even consorted with “the deacons of many a church…the selectmen of divers towns… a majority of the Great and General Court… and the governor,” as well as Goody Cloyse, who taught young Brown his catechism (612). Brown must, it seems, be exposed to the degree of sin that there is in the world, but rather than fight against it, he is defeated by it. Not only does he participate in the ceremony with the devil and people he had formerly respected, he also returns to his home the next day confused and cynical, bearing a bitterness that he will carry with him until the end of his days.

In many of Hawthorne’s stories, the reader encounters a main male character who is a dark and brooding figure, one who is bent on persistent self-analysis. Though pensive and, seemingly half-crazy, these figures always seem to attract the attention of others, who are repelled by their strangeness and their insistence upon trying to understand sin and evil, but who, at the same time, are fixated by their own efforts to try to understand the men. In Hawthorne’s stories “Ethan Brand,” “The Minister’s Black Veil,” and “Young Goodman Brown,” the reader identifies striking similarities among all three main characters. They are each afflicted with a nagging and all-consuming desire to understand how evil is at work in the world, though they themselves do not want to be evil. They hope, as well, to draw others’ attention to the destructive influence of evil, but their obsession with trying to understand this aspect of human nature prevents them from living a full and meaningful life, and almost all meet tragic ends, even if the end signifies a bitterness and cynicism that never lift from the man’s spirit. In these three stories, Hawthorne seems to be delivering a moral lesson to the reader, though it is not, perhaps, a lesson that one might initially expect. Be mindful of your spiritual tensions, Hawthorne seems to say to his audience, but beware that they do not consume you or afflict others. Simply try to live the best life possible by exhibiting the better characteristics of humankind. We are all fallible and sinful, Hawthorne acknowledges, but that need not be a reason for us to burden ourselves for our entire lifetime on Earth.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Ethan Brand.” The Oxford Anthology of English Literature. Eds. Rose Benet, William, and Norman Holmes Pearson. New York Oxford University Press, 1938. 422-430.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Minister’s Black Veil.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Sixth Edition. Nina Baym, Ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. 626-635.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” The Norton Anthology of  American Literature, Shorter Sixth Edition. Nina Baym, Ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003, 610-619.