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Name: _________________________________________ Date: ________

“The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Drawing Inferences About Meaning

Following the example in the first box, as you read the story and note the quotations listed below in the boxes labeled Description/Dialogue, try to make a logic guess (Inference) about the meaning that is not directly stated.

|Description/Dialogue |

|“He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his face.” |

|What inference can you draw about the reaction of the people to the veil? Has Mr. Hooper truly changed? |

|Inference |

|Villagers are frightened by the veil. Mr. Hooper hasn’t changed anything about himself or the way he preaches, aside from the wearing of |

|the veil. But his sermon did reference “secret sin”, so the people may see the veil as a symbol of his own secret sin that he is hiding. |

|Description/Dialogue |

|“At the close of the services, the people hurried out with indecorous confusion, eager to communicate their |

|pent-up amazement, and conscious of higher spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil.” |

|What inference can you draw regarding the reaction of the villagers to Mr. Hooper’s new look? |

|Inference |

| |

|Description/Dialogue |

|“Why do you look back?” said one in the procession to his partner? |

|“I had a fancy,” replied she, “that the minister and the maiden’s spirit were walking hand in hand.” |

|“And so had I, at the same moment,” said the other. |

|What inferences can you draw from this dialogue about the veil’s intensifying impact on the villagers? |

|Inference |

| |

|Description/Dialogue |

|“Know, then, this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it ever, both in light and darkness, in solitude and before the gaze |

|of multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my familiar friends. No mortal eye will see it withdrawn. This dismal shade must separate me|

|from the world…I perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil.” |

|In his reply to Elizabeth, what does Mr. Hooper suggest is the veil’s meaning? |

|Inference |

| |

|Description/Dialogue |

|“But with the multitude, good Mr. Hooper was a bugbear…the gentle and timid would turn aside to avoid him…others would make it a point of |

|hardihood to throw themselves in his way…there would always be faces behind the gravestones, peeping at his black veil.” |

|Based on the descriptions of the people’s reactions, what inferences can you draw about Mr. Hooper’s happiness in life? |

|Inference |

| |

|Description/Dialogue |

|“Before the veil of eternity be lifted, let me cast aside this black veil from your face!” |

|“Never!” cried the veiled clergyman. “On earth, never!” |

|What inference can you draw about when he will remove the veil? What does this inference suggest about the essential meaning of the veil? |

|Inference |

| |

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