The Minister's Black Veil
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40 free The Minister's Black Veil trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil starts with one small change: a mild New England clergyman walks to his meeting-house one morning with a piece of black cloth hanging over his face. The story follows what that one change does to his congregation, to the woman he is engaged to and to the rest of his long life. This quiz covers the story the way a class would: what happens at the first veiled service and the two ceremonies that follow, who says what in the village, how the people closest to Hooper respond, and how the final scene plays out. It also looks beyond the plot to the real clergyman Hawthorne pointed to in a footnote, where and how the story was first printed, what a famous early reviewer made of it, and the parts of Hawthorne's own life that shaped it. It suits students revising for a test on the story, teachers who want a ready multiple-choice check, and anyone coming back to Hawthorne after years away. Every answer comes with a short explanation tied to the text.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which question does The Minister's Black Veil leave unanswered right to the end?
Why Hooper wears it
Why Hooper wears it is never revealed: he offers only hints, telling his fiancée the veil may stand for sorrow or for guilt that any mortal might hide. Readers have argued over the reason ever since.
Q 02In The Minister's Black Veil, what becomes of Hooper's face covering when he dies?
It is buried with him
It is buried with him: still veiled, he is laid in his coffin and carried to the grave. The narrator calls it an awful thought that his face mouldered beneath the cloth.
Q 03In his dying speech in The Minister's Black Veil, Hooper declares that he sees a black veil on whom?
Everyone around him
Everyone around him, he insists, hides an inmost heart from loved ones and from God, so all wear a veil of their own. The watchers shrink from one another as he falls back on his pillow.
Q 04Who is Hooper's fiancée in The Minister's Black Veil, the woman who asks him plainly to remove it?
Elizabeth
Elizabeth asks him plainly to lift the veil and explain it; when he will not raise it even once, she says farewell and the engagement ends.
Q 05A footnote to The Minister's Black Veil says a real Maine clergyman hid his face after what?
Accidentally killing a friend
Accidentally killing a friend in his youth, the footnote says, led Joseph Moody to hide his face until his own death. Hawthorne adds that Moody's covering meant something different from Hooper's.
Q 06Which 1850 novel by the author of The Minister's Black Veil centers on a clergyman concealing his guilt?
The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter has Arthur Dimmesdale hide his part in Hester Prynne's adultery while she wears her shame openly. It followed the tale of the veiled Hooper by fourteen years.
Q 07Which consonant did the author of The Minister's Black Veil add to his name, reputedly to disown a witch-trial judge?
W
A "w" turned Hathorne into Hawthorne, probably in his early twenties. His great-great-grandfather John Hathorne had been one of the judges at the witch trials.
Q 08In The Minister's Black Veil, how do village children react when the veiled Hooper nears their games?
They run away
They run away, breaking off their merriest sports while he is still far off. It grieves the kindly Hooper deeply, since he used to bless each of them after services.
Q 09What is the subject of Hooper's first sermon from behind the veil in The Minister's Black Veil?
Secret sin
Secret sin, the sad mysteries people hide even from those closest to them, is his theme. Each listener feels the preacher has crept up and found out some hoarded wrong.
Q 10Which fellow American author's 1842 review called The Minister's Black Veil a masterly composition?
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe thought its one defect was that ordinary readers would miss the hint. He argued that the veil points to a crime involving the young lady whose funeral Hooper conducts.
Q 11In which New England village, named in the opening line, is The Minister's Black Veil set?
Milford
Milford's handsomest couple marry on the very night the veil first appears, and nearby Westbury supplies the young clergyman who rides in for the deathbed scene.
Q 12Which fabric, hanging in two folds from his forehead, forms Hooper's covering in The Minister's Black Veil?
Crape
Crape was the usual cloth of mourning, so the veil suits the funeral Hooper conducts that afternoon and chills the wedding he performs that night. One village lady notes any woman might wear such a thing on her bonnet.
Q 13In The Minister's Black Veil, which parts of Hooper's face remain in plain view beneath the covering?
His mouth and chin
Q 21As Hooper flees a wedding into the night in The Minister's Black Veil, what else does the narrator say is veiled?
The Earth
The Earth, the narrator says, has on her own black veil as he rushes out. It ends the veil's first day, which took in a sermon, a funeral and a wedding.
Q 22In The Minister's Black Veil, a village boy panics his playmates and himself by covering his face with what?
A handkerchief
A handkerchief, old and black, is his mask, and the joke scares him so badly he nearly loses his wits. By the next day the veil is all the village talks about, tavernkeeper and schoolchildren included.
Q 23What does the church deputation sent to question Hooper end up doing in The Minister's Black Veil?
His mouth and chin stay bare, so his breath visibly shakes the folds as he walks, reads and prays. Everything above is hidden, though he can still see out through the cloth.
Q 14Which church officer, tolling the bell as The Minister's Black Veil opens, is first to cry out at Hooper's face?
The sexton
The sexton is watching Hooper's door, ready to stop the bell at the first glimpse of him, and blurts out his astonishment. He later says he cannot feel his good parson's face is really there.
Q 15Which parishioner in The Minister's Black Veil asks if the veiled figure is really the parson, then calls him mad?
Goodman Gray
Goodman Gray follows Hooper across the meeting-house threshold crying that the parson has gone mad. An old woman hobbling in mutters that Hooper has made himself something awful.
Q 16After the first veiled service in The Minister's Black Veil, what harmless cause do one or two parishioners suggest?
Weak eyes
Weak eyes needing a shade is their guess: they say Hooper has strained his sight studying by the midnight lamp. They insist there is no mystery at all.
Q 17In The Minister's Black Veil, which regular courtesy does Old Squire Saunders neglect to offer the veiled Hooper?
A dinner invitation
A dinner invitation is what he omits, though Hooper had blessed the food at his table nearly every week since settling in the parish. The narrator slyly blames a lapse of memory.
Q 18At the funeral in The Minister's Black Veil, what is the corpse said to do as Hooper bends over the coffin?
It shudders
It shudders slightly, rustling the shroud, at the instant the veil hangs forward and bares his features. Only one superstitious old woman claims to have seen it.
Q 19In The Minister's Black Veil, two mourners in the funeral procession fancy Hooper is walking beside whom?
The dead maiden's spirit
The dead maiden's spirit, walking at his side, is what both say they pictured at the same moment. Some readers take that shared fancy as a hint that Hooper and the young woman had a guilty history.
Q 20At the wedding in The Minister's Black Veil, what does Hooper spill on glimpsing himself in a looking-glass?
Wine
Wine, still untasted, hits the carpet as the sight of his own veiled figure horrifies him as much as it does the guests. He rushes out into the night, having just toasted the newlyweds.
Leaves without asking
The deputation leaves without asking a thing: its members sit speechless under his unseen gaze, then report the matter too weighty for anything short of a council of the churches.
Q 24Begging his fiancée to stay with him in The Minister's Black Veil, Hooper admits to feeling what behind it?
Lonely and frightened
Lonely and frightened, he says, yet he still will not raise the veil a single time for her. He reflects, even in grief, that a mere piece of cloth has parted them.
Q 25Among its bad influences, what one desirable effect does the narrator of The Minister's Black Veil credit to it?
It wins him converts
It wins him converts: the veil gives Hooper an awful power over souls in agony, and they say he led them out from behind it. Strangers travel long distances just to stare at him in church.
Q 26After Hooper's election sermon in The Minister's Black Veil, that year's laws are said to show what two qualities?
Gloom and piety
Gloom and piety worthy of the earliest settlers marked that year's lawmaking, so deep an impression did the veiled preacher make on the governor, council and representatives.
Q 27By what title do the New England churches come to address the aged Hooper in The Minister's Black Veil?
Father
Father Hooper is the name he earns across the region as the years whiten the hair above his veil. By then he has outlived nearly all who were adults when he arrived.
Q 28In The Minister's Black Veil, which sober-minded villager tells his wife something is amiss with Hooper's intellects?
The physician
The physician admits the veil unsettles even him, making Hooper seem ghost-like from head to foot. Decades later a doctor is also at the deathbed, able only to ease the patient's last pangs.
Q 29In what role does Hooper's former fiancée reappear at his deathbed in The Minister's Black Veil?
His nurse
His nurse, it turns out, is the woman whose quiet affection has lasted in solitude through all the years since they parted. She would have covered his face herself had the veil slipped.
Q 30In The Minister's Black Veil, which young clergyman from Westbury tries to lift the covering from the dying Hooper?
Reverend Mr. Clark
Reverend Mr. Clark, a zealous young divine who rode in haste to pray at the bedside, asks to cast the veil aside so no shadow rests on Hooper's memory. Rebuffed, he asks what horrible crime Hooper is carrying to judgment.