Emig Hawthorne Blog

For this week’s readings, Nathaniel Hawthorne reveals exactly what his ancestors taught him: the sense of sin, a tendency towards introspection, and allegorical habit. Using different symbols throughout his stories, Hawthorne highlights the Unpardonable sin, the violation of the human heart. Hawthorne himself describes this sin as “divorcing one's head from one's heart and oneself from humanity.” This sin is a recurring theme in his works as we see in “The Minister’s Black Veil,” “The Birthmark,” and “Young Goodman Brown.” Though Hawthorne often describes his characters as good people, each of them usually has a specific vice, or sin, that weighs heavily on their hearts and minds. In my opinion, “The Minister’s Black Veil” displayed the effects of the Unpardonable Sin on both victim and perpetrator. Without even revealing the actual sin, it is clear that Father Hooper’s actions violates the human hearts of his entire faith community.

            In “The Minister’s Black Veil,” though the minister never reveals his great sin, it is apparent that the community around Father Hooper is greatly affected by his mysterious black veil. “The minister received then with friendly courtesy, but became silent, after they were seated, leaving to his visitors the whole burden of introducing their important business. The topic, it might be supposed, was obvious enough. There was the black veil swathed round Mr. Hooper's forehead, and concealing every feature above his placid mouth, on which, at times, they could perceive the glimmering of a melancholy smile. But that piece of crape, to their imagination, seemed to hang down before his heart, the symbol of a fearful secret between him and them.” In this passage, we see that the black veil destroys how the community views their celestial minister—his reputation as a minister is forever tarnished and plagued by rumors of evil and secret sin. Hawthorne states, “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.” In this passage, we see that the Unpardonable Sin has also destroyed the perpetrator, Father Hooper. At the end of his life, Hooper “sat, shivering with the arms of death around him, while the black veil hung down, awful, at that last moment, in the gathered terrors of a lifetime.”  Though he did his best to live a good life, the stigma of the black veil, his great sin, forever plagued his thoughts, his congregation, and ultimately his mortality.

            In “The Birthmark” and “Young Goodman Brown,” both stories tell the story of the Unpardonable Sin. “The Birthmark” serves as a sign of human imperfection, which, for Hawthorne, resonates with the human tendency to sin. However, we see that it is Aylmer who is the true sinner. The following passage describes a dream Aylmer had about his wife: “He had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.” This passage really highlights the Unpardonable Sin as the greatest of sin. Though Georgiana’s birthmark symbolizes sin, Aylmer’s sin is one that violates the human heart, his wife’s heart, and certainly trumps all other sin. In the end, we see this violation destroy both Aylmer, as he becomes obsessed with the birthmark, and Georgiana, who dies at the end of the story.

            “Young Goodman Brown” also features the Unpardonable Sin. This story uses all Hawthorne’s best known traits. His allegorical habit pins the symbolic Faith, Brown’s wife, against the abode of the devil, the forest, as we well know. In this story, we see Goodman Brown venture out into the forest and seemingly witness him latch onto the confines of evil. To me, it seemed like a journey to the dark side. Brown states, "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given." Though Brown is a fervent Puritan, his faith is greatly shaken by the mysteries of evil to the point that evil now consumes his entire being.

The following day, the “minister was taking a walk along the graveyard to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema.” In this passage, we see Brown’s transition into a “stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man.” Whether his experiences in the forest were real or a dream, we do not know. However, it is clearly certain from that point forward, Young Goodman Brown has no wife, no faith, and no goodness left in him, and upon his death, “they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.”