In every literary piece an individual reads, may It be short story or novel, there are bound to be some type of literary device, may it be just one main one the author focuses their attention to add a specific tone to their piece as a well as make that literary piece distinguishable, or multiple devices to maintain variety and unpredictability. Without at least decent use of literary device, the reader’s eyes will begin to stray as they are trying to maintain attention with that specific piece.
There are no comparisons to show to a reader what the author perceives an object or living thing means to them and without any devices, the goal of drawing the reader out of their world and into the author’s ultimately fails at grabbing the reader’s attention because there was nothing in the story effective enough at evoking the targeted emotion the author was trying to do from the very start.
A short story that does a great job at successfully drawing the reader away from their world and into the authors is The Ministers Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This Story has a variety of literary device, but as to what stands it, it is symbolism. Symbolism is the author’s way of showing readers the significance of an object to them and what they truly represent in their hearts.
The story has major emphasis on the idea that the veil the protagonist (Parson Hooper) of the story wears is actually a “barrier” that masks the sin committed by Hooper done sometime before the start of the story and a “mirror” that reflects the true sinful nature of human beings back into the eyes who gazed at the veil as evident by the townspeople’s reactions to the veil when Hooper walked into the church with it possibly in the form of a horrendous creature that looks resembles them, but with demonic facial features if you think about it.
When everyone in the church reacted so negatively to the veil at first, the first thing a reader would expect the townspeople to do is stop and consider the different possible reasons for Hooper donning such an odd accessory as well its symbolic significance.
Instead of doing the following, the towns people chose to see, hear and believe only what they want to and decided that gossiping and ignoring Hooper would do them good when all it did was symbolize the curious and superstitious nature to human beings as being as including a hint of the shallow side to human beings as well. This story places heavy emphasis on the idea that no human is perfect despite social standing or job and none shall ever be because for every positive that a human creates, a negative trait will show up to balance it out.
This is shown to be true because even though Parson Hooper is minister, a person famous for teaching beliefs, even has committed a sin as shown when he attends a wedding and proceeds makes a toast to the couple only to catch his own reflection in the glass, which was a sight so frightful that he spilled his wine glass and left immediately, which makes it obvious according to the story that Hooper has sinned before because anyone who flinched at the sight of the veil in the story was guilty of a committed sin.
