The things in life he didn’t understand fascinated Nathaniel Hawthorne. He wrote a few stories in a literary journal called The Pioneer, one of them being “The Birthmark”. Time significantly influenced Hawthorne in creating this short story (Wheeler). Aylmer, the main character, uses the scientific experimentation throughout the story to remove the birthmark from his wife’s, Georgiana, face which results in him killing her. “The Birthmark” has attempting for perfection, the battle between science and nature, and the earthly love.
Aylmer trying to make everything in his life perfect is the dominant issue. Unfortunately, he killed his perfect wife due to an imperfection on her face. The potion he created to completely erase her “imperfect birthmark” took away her life. The birthmark symbolized mortality. The narrator of the story said that everything that is living is flawed and nature reminds us that everything that is alive dies at one point. The birthmark on her on her face was just a way to show she was human. Aylmer didn’t think of her birthmark that way though. He believes it’s an imperfection that makes her effects her soul. It’s ironic that he talks about having the power to “prolong life” and creating “elixir of immortality” (218), when he actually killed her. As she is dying, he finally tells her that she is “my peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect” (225). He tried so hard to create the ideal woman that he couldn’t see the good in Georgiana. Aylmer thinks Georgiana’s birthmark’s is the “..shape bore not a similarity to the human hand”(216) and I thought of this as Jesus’s hand on Georgiana’s face. At the end of the day, I have more respect for the men who saw Georgiana’s birthmark adding on to her beauty becau...
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...rriage. Georgiana just wanted to please her husband in every way she could.
Throughout “The Birthmark”, there was never ending motivatation for perfection, the battle between science and nature, and the earthly love. This story taught me that everything I do in life doesn’t have to be perfect- from cleaning my room to doing a project. As long as I get it complete is all that should matter. Trying to make something perfect could cause me ruining everything. Also, next time I get a pimple or an imperfection, I shouldn’t stress it and blow it out of proportion. I have plenty imperfections on my legs from picking all my scabs as a kid, but I would never let anyone try to change who I am because those scars on my legs make me who I am today. The moral of the story is if you try to take away the “imperfection” from the person, you end up destroying the person as a whole.
In the short story, “The Birthmark” Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the characters, foreshadowing, symbolism, and other rhetorical devices to alert people of the consequences of man having the power to control and alter nature. Additionally, through his skillful usage of diction, Hawthorne warns of the effects of seeking perfection through science. In “The Birthmark”, Aylmer, a man devoted entirely to science, marries Georgiana, a beautiful young woman with a single imperfection. Georgiana’s imperfection bears the resemblance of a tiny crimson hand and is visible on her left cheek. The birthmark becomes the object of Aylmer’s obsession and he resolves to use his scientific prowess to correct “what Nature left imperfect in her fairest work.” He succeeds in removing the birthmark; however, he unfortunately causes his wife’s death in the process. Through “The Birthmark”, Hawthorne suggests that nothing paradisiacal can exist on this earth, and that being imperfect is just part of being human.
Hawthorne's "The Birth-Mark" deals with the discrepancy between the strength of nature and the strength of science. Hawthorne's protagonist, Alymer, represents the world of science, whereas the strength of nature is represented by the birth-mark on Alymer's wife Georgiana's face. Alymer becomes obsessed with her birth-mark and, using his scientific knowledge, attempts to remove it. In this essay, I will show that Alymer's obsession results from his scientifically influenced way of thinking in categories, and also from his arrogant perfectionism, two character traits which are shown in this excerpt from the text. These character traits interfere with his moral conscientiousness and eventually caquse his downfall at the end of the story.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Birth-Mark,” Aylmer, a married scientist, believes himself to be above nature. Acting on these beliefs, he prepares
Hawthorne. “The Birthmark.” The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. R.V. Cassill, Richard Bausch. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 648-660.
What seems to be a simple tale of human error at first, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark”, implies a much deeper and darker note upon closer inspection. A relatively short story, it details an event in the lives of Aylmer and Georgiana, a recent wedded couple. Georgiana possesses a birthmark on her cheek that repulses Aylmer more and more as time goes on. When he confronts her about it, she voices that it is a part of her charm, but Aylmer begins to react so violently around it that Georgiana finally agrees to give him a chance to remove it. He spends a few days in the laboratory with her and does remove the birthmark, but also removes her soul from the earth, she dies when the birthmark is gone. This story is wrought with details that support its label as a “dark romantic tale”. To see the story in the correct light, one has to understand what dark romanticism is. Dark romantic writers believed that humans are prone to sin. The human race is not always blessed with divinity and wisdom. Second, they represented evil in their stories with supernatural characters; ghost...
There is a thin line between love and hate. Love is having a strong affection for another person, place, or thing and sometimes, it makes people do crazy things. Whether it is a woman chopping off hair due to a bad breakup or placing permanent tattoos on the body for commitment, one will go to major extremities to satisfy their passion for love. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story, “The Birthmark,¨ a psychotic scientist strives for perfection not only leading to the death of his beautiful wife, but overall attempting to have power and control over nature. Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes symbolism and foreshadowing to display the thematic complexities of mortality and human imperfection that the birthmark personifies psychologically and symbolically in the
The birthmark is a compelling story of one man’s obsession with his scientific ability to produce perfection. Aylmer, a scientist, is married to a Georgiana who is a very beautiful woman. Not long after getting married Georgiana’s birthmark, which is in the shape of a tiny handprint on her check, really begins to bother Aylmer. He sees it as a flaw in an other wise perfect woman. Georgiana knows that her birthmark disgusts him and, having grown up not bother at all by it, begins to hate it herself. He asks if she has ever considered having it removed. This is not something she has considered since other people in her life, especially men, have always seen it as a “charm”. Aylmer being an amazing scientist almost sees himself as god and feels that he has the power to remove this imperfection. Georgiana, bothered by her husband’s reaction to her birthmark, agrees to let him try to rid her of it. She is taken to his laboratory and he immediately begins to experiment. After she finds Aylmer’s book of experiments, which all end in failure, she for the first time, has some doubt about how this will work and confronts him. He reassures her and begins to try a multitude of methods, with the help of his assistant Aminadab, which do not work. At one point, there are several experiments going on and he even refers to himself as a “sorcerer” (Hawthorne 232). Finally, he produces a potion, which she drinks, and the birthmark begins to disappear! Slowly though, even as the experiment is working, Georgiana is fading away. He finds that ultimately, the birthmark was connected to her very soul and in his trying to act god like he actually kills her. Really this short story just proves that science has its limits and no man should try to act like G...
Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. Often times scientific advancements attempt to recreate perfection and disregard nature’s way of being. “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne shows the disconnection and battle between science and Mother Nature. Hawthorne creates the character, Aylmer, to show the science side of the spectrum and to show the extent it could go to. The protagonist, Aylmer, believes that with science anything can be done. Aylmer is a very intelligent and famous scientist who has worked in various fields and on various projects. Although he is very successful He is consumed with his idea of scientific perfection and he lets it fog up his vision of his wife. His wife, Georgina, is described as being basically perfect except for a small red mark on her cheek that burdens her husband. The
In today’s society, it seems that we cannot turn the television on or look in a
To understand the message of “The Birthmark”, we must first understand the events and circumstances that took place in Hawthorn’s time period which most likely prompted him to write this short story. Nathaniel Hawthorn was a 19th century novelist who is perhaps best known for writing The Scarlet Letter. In Hawthorn’s time, a new belief system called positivism was on the rise. Positivism exalted science. This ne...
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, “The Birthmark” was on the darker side of the Romantic Movement, but it was still a love story. There was a love of science and obsessing over beauty and perfection. Aylmer love Georgiana and she loved him. She was willing to die for him, and he was willing to experiment on her, even if meant losing her. Hawthorne put himself into his work, expressing fears, and emotions that was hard to put into words. His surroundings impacted the outcome of his
Aylmer, the protagonist, in “The Birthmark” becomes selfish as a result of his obsession to remove a miniscule birthmark from his beautiful wife’s face in order to achieve perfection. As a consequence of a small and distinct birthmark on his wife’s left cheek, Aylmer frightened, thinks the birthmark is evil that symbolizes sorrow, decay, and death. Although, the birthmark is benign and harmless, that only denotes the flaws that nature has left on a human being, to Aylmer it represents his wife's imperfection, which needs to be fixed and extracted. As a result of attempting to remove the birthmark in order to achieve perfection, Aylmer blinds himself and does not think of the consequences. He dreams of the fatal outcome th...
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”, is the story of a crazed scientist whose strive for perfection not only leads to the death of his beautiful wife, but the attempt of man to have power over nature. It follows the story of Aylmer and his obsession with removing the birthmark off his beautiful wife, Georgiana. “His unnatural fixation to his wife’s birthmark even consumes him in his sleep as he dreams of cutting it off much like scraping an apple off its skin.” (Snodgrass 29). This narrative explores the themes of perfection, and the conflict between science and the natural world.
In Nathanial Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark,” Aylmer, a crazed, “mad-scientist,” seeks to remove the scarlet handprint birthmark from his wife, Georgiana’s cheek. From the opening of the work, the third person narrator describes Aylmer’s obsession with science and the adverse effects it has had on his social life. Aylmer is tied up in this battle within himself and with his assigned association between the natural and the spiritual world. He wishes to have as much control over these colliding worlds as possible, granting himself god-like power and control in the process. In the art of manipulating nature through science, Aylmer believes he is able to alter the spiritual aspects of the natural as well. Aylmer’s focus on spirituality is Hawthorne’s way of commenting on mankind’s fixation on sin and redemption.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1843 short story entitled “The Birth-Mark” is, at face value, a traditionally formatted Hawthorne story; it is a textbook example of his recurrent theme of the unpardonable sin as committed by the primary character, Aylmer, the repercussions of which result in the untimely death of his wife, Georgiana. However, there seems to be an underlying theme to the story that adds a layer to Hawthorne’s common theme of the unpardonable sin; when Aylmer attempts to reconcile his intellectual prowess with his love for his wife, his efforts turn into an obsession with perfecting his wife’s single physical flaw and her consequent death. This tragedy occurs within the confines of traditional gender