The influence of The Minister's Black Veil

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil is definitely one of the creepiest stories in Amerian literature and justly famous as a classic of 19th-century fiction - archaic, as much of Hawthorne is, even in his day, and another piece of evidence of his fascination, fixation, and to a degree romanticization of the Puritans of the colonial era. Story is quite simple in outline: in the Puritan village of Milford one day without warning or explanation the minister, Mr. Hooper, appears in church wearing a black veil that conceals his face down to his lips. He delivers his sermon - his sermons known for their general placidity - and greets people outside the church and on the street, but says nothing about his startling new appearance. Over time, everyone in the village is talking about his strange behavior, wondering whether he's doing penance for some grievous sin; children begin to fear him, others to mock him. The elders of the church back off and don't even ask him why he's wearing the veil; it even takes his wife some time to do so - about half-way through the story he speaks for the first time, tells her he will wear the veil for the rest of his life, until death when each of us sheds our mortal "veil" - for her, that's too much and she abandons their marriage (though, as we learn at the end of the story, she remains faithful to their vows and becomes a nurse - whether just for him or for others is unclear). He wears the veil until his death, becoming famous and mysterious because of this, and on his deathbed, as they try to remove the veil, he sits up and protests and says that everyone who has been cruel to others, who has committed sinful acts that they think others can't or shouldn't see (though God can), wears a veil like his. And then he dies. The whole idea of a man passing his entire life wearing such a mask - and to do so suddenly and without any warning or explanation - is very disturbing - and a percursor to various tales, songs, legends in popular culture: King's The Man in the Black Coat, Dylan's song of similar title, e.g. It's difficult to fathom precise meaning from the story, but it's effect is disturbing and disconcerting - perhaps made even more by Hawthorne's own note that minister in Maine did wear a veil or mask throughout his life after he'd killed a friend by accident. People passing among us who look "different" and concealed frighten us, like ghosts, specters, or visions from a dream.