Father
Hooper addresses the "pale spectators" encircling his death bed with the question
"Why do you tremble at me alone?" and the exhortation "Tremble also at each
other!" His point is that he believes that they (and perhaps all people) carry horrifying
sins of their own that they hide from others in a less literal way than he has chosen with his
symbolic veil. His final words,"I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black
Veil!," suggests that as he departs his earthly life, he wants the people attending his
death to consider their own misdeeds, which he claims are there for him to see. Hawthorne, the
story's author, was critical of religious dogma that focused primarily on sin rather than
redemption, and Hooper's last words were meant to be jarring and ugly to express his disapproval
of this sort of condemnation from clergymen.
Theof Hooper's corpse with its
faint smile suggests that Hooper is pleased with himself for shocking the people
who...
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