"Minister's Black Veil" : Hidden Sins "The Minister's Black Veil", a literary masterpiece written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was a divergent parable for the period it was written. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote as an anti-transcendentalist in the transcendentalist period; as a result, his view's in writings were mostly pessimistic considering his family's sinfulness. Hawthorne's grandfather was a judge in the Salem witch trails; for that reason, he was responsible for over twenty innocent deaths by mistrial. In addition, a reader can easily see the pessimism in his writing, and many hypothesize that his family's past has a part in his style.