Lesson 1.5 · Unit 1 · Short Fiction I · FIG 5.A, 5.B
Literal and figurative: reading one detail two ways
A detail can carry meaning without being a symbol, and a symbol is not a code to crack. The dependable method has two steps, and the order matters.
First establish what the thing literally is and does. Only then argue what it does for the story. Skip step one and you are asserting a meaning the text cannot confirm.
- FIG-1.L. Words with multiple meanings or connotations add nuance or complexity that can contribute to interpretations of a text.
- FIG-1.S. Comparisons not only communicate literal meaning but may also convey figurative meaning or transmit a perspective.
- FIG-1.X. When a material object comes to represent, or stand for, an idea or concept, it becomes a symbol.
- Literal meaning (FIG 5.A): what the detail actually is in the world of the story. Establish it before interpreting it.
- Figurative function (FIG 5.B): what the detail does beyond itself: what it suggests, hides, or forces other characters to face.
- Symbol (FIG 5.B): a detail whose figurative meaning the text keeps developing. Not every meaningful detail is one.
- The two-step move (FIG 5.A, 5.B): say what it is, then what it does. Only the first step makes the second provable.
About the text: Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Minister's Black Veil,” first published 1836. The paragraph in which Mr. Hooper first appears before his congregation.
Mr. Hooper, a gentlemanly person, of about thirty, though still a bachelor, was dressed with due clerical neatness, as if a careful wife had starched his band, and brushed the weekly dust from his Sunday's garb. There was but one thing remarkable in his appearance. Swathed about his forehead, and hanging down over his face, so low as to be shaken by his breath, Mr. Hooper had on a black veil. On a nearer view it seemed to consist of two folds of crape, which entirely concealed his features, except the mouth and chin, but probably did not intercept his sight, further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things. With this gloomy shade before him, good Mr. Hooper walked onward, at a slow and quiet pace, stooping somewhat, and looking on the ground, as is customary with abstracted men, yet nodding kindly to those of his parishioners who still waited on the meeting-house steps.
Before anyone assigns the veil a meaning, Hawthorne has built one into its geometry: the cloth works in one direction only. It “entirely concealed his features, except the mouth and chin,” taking from the congregation exactly the part of a man they use to judge him, while it “did not intercept his sight, further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things.” They lose their reading of him; he keeps his of them, only darker. The veil therefore functions to reverse who is exposed in a church. A reader could argue it signals grief rather than sin, and the paragraph allows that, but no reading survives that forgets the mouth and chin left uncovered.
Exam tip: establish the literal first. A paragraph that opens “the veil symbolizes secret sin” has skipped the evidence that would make the symbol arguable.
Words with multiple meanings or connotations add nuance or complexity that can contribute to interpretations of a text. The veil is a “black” veil on a gentleman “of about thirty”: black carries funerals, secrecy, and guilt as well as the color of a piece of cloth. State the literal sense first, then ask which of the connotations the story keeps activating.
Write one paragraph performing the two-step move on the veil: what it literally is and does, then one thing it functions to make visible. Quote two short phrases.
Show a model response
Literally the veil is “two folds of crape” hanging low enough to be moved by Hooper's breath: cloth, not mystery. What matters is that it works one way. It “entirely concealed his features, except the mouth and chin,” so the parish loses the face it has always used to measure its minister, while Hooper keeps his own sight and merely sees everything darker. The veil functions to reverse the usual arrangement of a church: the man at the front, normally the most visible person there, becomes the only one who cannot be read, and his parishioners are unsettled before he explains a thing.
Rubric: the paragraph claims a function, not a meaning (Row A); each quotation is followed by commentary on how the wording produces it (Row B).