Compare And Contrast The Masque Of The Red Death And The Minister's Black Veil

Separation and Denial
Both influential writers in the time of early American literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe explored the dark motives of the human psyche. In “The Minister’s Black Veil”, a short story by Hawthorne, the town’s minister, Mr. Hooper steps out into the street one day wearing a black veil that covers his face. His clergymen cannot bear to see him plainly profess his sins and instead separate themselves in an attempt to deny the truth that all people are flawed, but are eventually forced to accept it. In Poe’s short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, Prince Prospero and his merrymakers lock themselves within a castellated abbey in an attempt to escape the horrible “Red Death” that ravages the lives of the
Hooper’s congregation possess too much pride and cannot accept that every human is flawed. Suddenly, the minister dons a veil upon his face with no explanation, and although he wears a simple piece of fabric, the townspeople begin to gossip about and avoid him. “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” (Hawthorne 6). They cannot accept Mr. Hooper’s veil because he has the bravery to publicly display his own immorality when his duty as a minister is to represent a holy person free of sin. As a role model of society, a minister guides the lives of others. If a person of God can have flaws, then the average person can most definitely be flawed as well, and a Puritan cannot sin if they want to go to Heaven. Therefore, admitting that all humans have flaws would mean their straight and narrow Puritan lifestyle holds no significance. Just as Mr. Hooper’s congregation cannot admit their own flaws, The characters in Poe’s story have the inability to accept that they can fall victim to death and disease. In The Masque of the Red Death, Prince Prospero and his revelers have an excessive amount of pride, which leads to them believing that they can cheat out death. They lock themselves within a castellated abbey, where “There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was beauty,
Hooper finally reveals his reason for wearing the veil, to prove to his congregation that all humans are flawed. “‘Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil?... I look around me, and, lo! On every visage a black veil!’” (Hawthorne 12). Because the congregation cannot take it upon themselves to accept that all people are flawed, their confrontation forces itself upon them and they suffer because of it. They undergo agony because through their denial, they choose ignorance. By the time the fact that all people have imperfections imposes itself upon the townspeople, they have denied this truth for so long that they cannot mend the lifestyle choices at the root of Puritan society. As a result of their ongoing denial, they mentally suffer with the idea of human flaw because it means they will go to Hell, the ultimate punishment for a Puritan. Just as the rejection of an undesirable fact causes the downfall of Mr. Hooper’s congregation, the characters of Poe’s story suffer cognitive agony as a result of an attempt to escape death. At the end of The Masque of The Red Death, the partygoers finally acknowledge the Red Death and fall to the ground, dead. “And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night” (Poe,7). They have the inability to accept that no one can obtain freedom from death, so when they lock