This story conveys the
message that what unites all human beings is both our propensity to sin as well as our
insistence on concealing our sinful natures from our peers. In this way, then, we can never
truly know or be known by another person because we hide behind the figurative veils that we
hold up between ourselves and everyone else.
Mr. Hooper's first sermon after
beginning to wear the veil was about the subject of "secret sin," the sins that we
seek to hide from the world, ourselves, and even God (though such concealment from God is
ultimately impossible). Further, his conversation with his fiancee, Elizabeth, hints at this
secret sorrow as well, especially when he insists that it is not particular to him but true of
all mortals. Finally, in the end, when Mr. Hooper is on his deathbed, he marvels that the veil
has been the reason he's spent his life in isolation when he looks at all those around him and
says, "'lo! on every face a black veil!'" People have ostracized
him alone because of the physical veil he wears, a veil which is only
symbolic of the human condition of sinfulness, the condition of all
people.
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