the seafaring tradition of his father's family,Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in the early to mid-1820s and decided to become a writer.He met with little success for many years and so loathed his self-published and anonymous novel Fanshawe (1828)that he attempted to destroy every copy.However,building on the success and critical attention he was beginning to garner from the publication of stories in magazines during the 1830s,he published a collection of short stories and essays entitled Twice-Told Tales.The book was ignored by the public and did not earn Hawthorne a profit until its third edition.However,the stories were a great success among critics, including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.Hawthorne finally overcame his financial troubles when he published The Scarlet Letter,a novel which has its roots in his earlier writings about Puritan America.After Hawthorne's critical and popular success with The House of the Seven Gables (1851),his work began to decline.Upon his death in 1864,Hawthorne had fundamentally altered American literature,serving as the first author to combine a distinctive American voice and historical setting with universal themes of suffering and guilt. "The Minister's Black Veil"(1836)is one of Hawthorne's best known and most respected short stories.First published in the Token,the story is also included in Hawthorne's first collection of short stories,Twice Told Tales (1837).Known for its ambiguous and dark tone,the story recounts the tale of a minister so consumed with human sin and duplicity that he dons a veil to hide his face and manifest the spiritual veils that all humans wear.The reasons for the minister's actions and their implications are never fully explained,leaving readers to ponder Hawthorne's meaning.As in such works as "Young Goodman Brown"(1835)and The Scarlet Letter (1850), Hawthorne employed the settings and themes that are characteristic of his fiction:a Puritan New England setting.a fascination with the secret sins of humanity.the transformation of an object into a symbol,a dark,somber tone,and a reliance on ambiguity. Understanding symbol and allegory: In the broadest sense a symbol is anything which signifies something;in this sense all words are symbols.In discussing literature,however,the term symbol is applied only to a word or phrase that signifies an object or event which in its turn signifies something.The word "rose",forthe seafaring tradition of his father's family, Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in the early to mid- 1820s and decided to become a writer. He met with little success for many years and so loathed his self-published and anonymous novel Fanshawe (1828) that he attempted to destroy every copy. However, building on the success and critical attention he was beginning to garner from the publication of stories in magazines during the 1830s, he published a collection of short stories and essays entitled Twice-Told Tales. The book was ignored by the public and did not earn Hawthorne a profit until its third edition. However, the stories were a great success among critics, including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Hawthorne finally overcame his financial troubles when he published The Scarlet Letter, a novel which has its roots in his earlier writings about Puritan America. After Hawthorne's critical and popular success with The House of the Seven Gables (1851), his work began to decline. Upon his death in 1864, Hawthorne had fundamentally altered American literature, serving as the first author to combine a distinctive American voice and historical setting with universal themes of suffering and guilt. "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836) is one of Hawthorne's best known and most respected short stories. First published in the Token, the story is also included in Hawthorne's first collection of short stories, Twice Told Tales (1837). Known for its ambiguous and dark tone, the story recounts the tale of a minister so consumed with human sin and duplicity that he dons a veil to hide his face and manifest the spiritual veils that all humans wear. The reasons for the minister's actions and their implications are never fully explained, leaving readers to ponder Hawthorne's meaning. As in such works as "Young Goodman Brown" (1835) and The Scarlet Letter (1850), Hawthorne employed the settings and themes that are characteristic of his fiction: a Puritan New England setting, a fascination with the secret sins of humanity, the transformation of an object into a symbol, a dark, somber tone, and a reliance on ambiguity. Understanding symbol and allegory: In the broadest sense a symbol is anything which signifies something; in this sense all words are symbols. In discussing literature, however, the term symbol is applied only to a word or phrase that signifies an object or event which in its turn signifies something. The word “rose”, for