External and internal conflict in “The Minister's Black Veil” Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story “The Minister's Black Veil” manifests a duality of conflict: both a external conflict and internal conflict. The purpose of this essay is to explore both types of conflict as they manifest themselves in the story. In this reader's opinion, the central conflicts - the relationship between the protagonist and the antagonist (Abrams 225) - in the story are internal, a spiritual-moral conflict within the minister, the Reverend Mr. Hooper, and an external one with the world at large represented by the congregation. Wilson Sullivan in "Nathaniel Hawthorne" tells where the author got the idea of ​​the conflict between good and evil: He looked back, deeply, to America's Puritan past, to the era of New England theocracy, when the conflict between good and evil, freedom and tyranny, love and hate were more explicit, more rigidly defined, free from the ambiguities of an increasingly pluralistic society, governed by a shared morality (70). At the beginning of the story, "The Minister's Black Veil," the sexton is ringing the church bell and at the same time watching Mr. Hooper's door, when he suddenly says, "But what has good Parson Hooper got on his face?" . The surprise shown by the sacristan is repeated in the amazement of the bystanders: "With one in agreement they began, expressing even more wonder. . . " The reason is this: “Wrapped over his forehead and hanging over his face, so low that it is shaken by his breath” is a thirty-year-old unmarried parish priest receives a series of reactions from his congregation: “I really can't to think that behind that piece... in the middle of the paper there is the face of the good Mr. Hooper..." lives and lives righteously. This request involves a continuous, personal and individual conflict with evil as long as life continues. WORKS CITED Brams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999. Erskine, John. “The Minister's Black Veil.” Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=HawMini.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts. /english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1Kazin, Alfred Introduction. Selected short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Fawcett Premier, 1966. Sullivan, Wilson. "Nathaniel Hawthorne." In New England Men of Letters. New York: Macmillan Co., 1972.