When I first read this short story passage, I was so confused about what Nathaniel Hawthorne was talking about. As we discussed it class, I started to get the bigger picture and the understanding of what this is about. Puritans considered themselves as pure. So in church, it is about a church minister who always had on a black veil over him. He would not remove it. People left him and avoided him because they felt that he was weird. He wasn't suppose to have a black veil on him because puritans are suppose to be pure and not sinful. He was different. He wanted to give a message to people at church that even though you are any type of race or religion, everyone makes mistakes. They should not hide it. Church is the time where you can have your sin's wash. He wanted to demonstrate that he as a minister sin's as well