SOURCE: “An Ambiguity of Sin or Sorrow,” in The New England Quarterly, Vol. XXI, No. 3, September, 1948, pp. 342-49.

In the following essay, Fogle contends that the central message of Hawthorne's “The Minister's Black Veil” is intentionally ambiguous, leaving readers to choose among competing interpretations.

Hawthorne's characteristic fusion of simplicity on the surface with layers of complexity beneath is perhaps nowhere more fully in evidence than in “The Minister's Black Veil,” a brief, highly typical, and thoroughly successful story. It is subtitled “A Parable,” and the outer meaning of the parable is abundantly clear. An apparently blameless minister inexplicably dons a black veil, and wears it throughout his life-time, in despite of many well-meant pleas to cast it off. On his deathbed he reveals its secret and its justification.

What, but the mystery which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows...