Jimi Hendrix and Nathaniel Hawthorne are pretty similar

Hey readers! I was listening Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of All Along The Watchtower, and I thought to myself, “Wow the society he describes resembles the society in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Minister’s Black Veil.” The wording in All Along The Watchtower closely resembles that of “The Minister’s Black Veil.” It seems to me that these two works of art share a deeper connection. That connection is the confusion that arises in the societies that both artists describe. For The Minister’s Black Veil it is the confusion over why the minister is wearing the veil, but for All Along The Watchtower the confusion comes from a general confusion of society and a revolution stems from it. Through this connection, a deeper exploration of both the song and the short story is needed.

The reactions of the many people in the town of Milford in “The Minister’s Black Veil,” are of confusion. The minister is going against social norms and is receiving a lot of negative feedback for it. “‘But what has good Parson Hooper got upon his face?’ cried the sexton in astonishment” (link to book line 2). The confusion the sexton displays is one of disgust and astonishment as he can simply not believe what Parson Hooper is wearing on his face. This simple act of wearing a black veil upon one’s head goes so far as to cause great unrest within the small town of Milford. Jimi Hendrix perfectly captures this unrest in the lyric: “There's too much confusion / I can't get no relief” (genius lines 3-4). It is unclear who is saying that they cannot get relief from the confusion, I believe that the “I” is a metaphor for the society and Jimi Hendrix is embodying that when he sings these words.

More to come as delve further into the rabbit hole

- Alex