The Thematic Complexity Of Love In The Birthmark, By Nathaniel Hawthorne

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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
"Women Beware Science: 'The Birthmark.'." Short Story Criticism, edited by Rachelle Mucha and Thomas J. Schoenberg, vol. 89, Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420071520/LitRC?u=troy25957&sid=LitRC&xid=268bd900. Accessed 8 Dec. 2017. Originally published in Critical Essays on Hawthorne's Short Stories, edited by Albert J. von Frank, G. K. Hall & Co., 1991, pp. 164-172.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Birth-Mark.” Gutenburg.com, 8 Dec. 2017, gutenburg.com/.

Howard, Jeffrey. "Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Birth-mark." Explicator 70.2 (2012): 133-136. Academic Search Complete. Web. 31 Jan. 2016.

Shakinovsky, Lynn. "The Return of the Repressed: Illiteracy and the Death of the Narrative in
Hawthorne's `The.."ATQ, vol. 9, no. 4, Dec. 1995, p. 269. EBSCOhost ,libproxy.troy.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.libproxy.troy.edu/login.a spx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=9601050951&site=ehost-live. Weinstein, Cindy. “The Invisible Hand Made Visible: ‘The Birth-Mark.’” “Nineteenth-Century
Literature, vol. 48, no. 1, 1993, pp. 44–73. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2933940.

Tritt, Michael. "Chasing Perfection: Death Denial In Nathaniel Hawthorne's “The

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