How Did His Congregation Regard Mr Hooper

As the
congregation gathers in the meeting house, the sexton cries, "But what has good Parson
Hooper got upon his face?"  When another member of the congregation repeats "good Mr.
Hooper," indications, then, are that the minister is well-liked and respected.

However, when the perception of "good Mr. Hooper" changes, so, too, do
opinions.  "I don't like it," one old woman peremptorily exclaims:

'He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his
face.'

Others, too, become uncomfortable with the veil's
ambiguity; they are overcome with "perturbation." Indeed, it is this ambiguity which
causes some to become angry, others to believe the minister has "gone mad," and still
others to become unnerved and leave the gathering.  The veil has cast a dark tone upon the day. 
Although he believes that "something is amiss with Mr. Hooper, the physician of the village
observes,

...the strangest part of the affair is the
effect of this vagary, even on a sober-minded man like myself.   The black veil, though it
covers only our pastor's face, throws its influence over his who person, and makes him ghostlike
from head to foot.  Do you not feel it so?

This ambiguous
influence of the veil upon the soul of the viewer leads Mr. Hooper's own fiancee to leave him
when he refuses to remove the veil, telling his love that the veil is a symbol that he is bound
to wear in mortal life.  Finally, as he lies dying, Father Hooper, as he has come to be called,
yet refuses to lift the veil.

'Why do you tremble at me
alone?' cried he, turning his veiled face round the circle of pale spectators.  'Tremble also at
each other!  Have men avoided me and women show no pity, and children screamed and fled, only
for my black veil?  When the friend show 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 and lived, and die! 
I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!'

While Mr. Hooper's veil may screen his secret sins, it is also symbolic of the
spiritual veils that others wear in the duplicity of their outward behavior and inner
"secret sins" as Hawthorne terms the private evil of people.  The ambiguity of the
veil leads the people to wonder if Mr. Hooper knows their "secret sins," so they
repudiate him or avoid him in their own guilt.