I think it is more accurate to say that this excellent
short story focuses more on the corruption in individuals rather than society as a
whole. There is a sense in which Hooper's act in donning the black veil is intensely
personal, and if we look at what he says on his death bed, we can see that, in a sense,
it was a result of the sin that he found within himself rather than society that caused
him to wear the black veil for the rest of his life. Note what he says before he dies to
justify why he will not remove the veil:
"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!"
Hooper
insists that he is no monster in this quote, as others believe. He has been treated as
such by others because of the way in which his veil reminded others of their own secret
sins, and their own "black veils" that separate them from God and from others. His
donning of the black veil was an intensely personal action and it was with the aim of
being honest before God and humanity. Thus we can say that this story, through the
powerful symbol of the black veil, supports Hawthorne's key belief that it is man that
is corrupt.
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