Joe Jankowski
Mr. Ingrassia
English IV Period 08
1/27/14
Literary Analysis on “The Birthmark”
Two major elements in “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne are symbolism and effect of the birthmark and characterization. Both of these elements are the reason why the death of Georgiana occurs. These elements differ Alymer and Georgiana from a normal married couple. A deep analysis of theses elements leads to a couple of distinctive meanings to the story.
A major element in “The Birthmark” is symbolism and effect of the birthmark. The birthmark has many meanings dealing with the connection of Alymer and Georgiana. The birthmark, which is on Georgiana’s face, is her one tragic flaw. Georgiana is both beautiful spiritually and physically. A birthmark normally is not a big deal, but Alymer takes the birthmark into a deeper meaning. He views the birthmark as a spiritual flaw on her character. Removal of the birthmark will make her reach perfection in Alymer’s eyes. He believes the mark symbolizes “his wife’s liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death.”(2) The narrator hints towards this being nonsense. Aminadab finally gives some sanity in this story when he tells Georgiana that he would not have her remove the birthmark. At the end of the story, the birthmark fading away is depicted as the “stain of the rainbow fading out of the sky.”(10)
The birthmark serves both physical and emotional means. Georgiana blushes, cryes, and turns pale through out the whole story. The birthmark causes her own emotions to become public. Whenever she blushes, the birthmark mark becomes invisible, but when she turns pale the birthmark appears again. Alymer does not want to see the appearance and disappearance of the birthmark because both her e...
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... She adores him and his fervent convictions. She knows what is going to happen. Georgiana puts love and loyalty over her life and therefore she can be considered a martyr of these traits. She tells Alymer right before she dies that do not be sorrowful for rejecting who she is. Georgiana is still loyal to Alymer when she dies because she knows he tried his best to help her (Rosenberg 145). Georgiana’s happily lets Alymer be in complete control.
In order to help fully comprehend the meaning of “The Birthmark”, an understanding of the several meanings of the birthmark are required. The understanding of Alymer’s obsession, selfishness, dominance and Georgiana’s submissiveness will have one predict the ending. Both of theses elements help develop the major themes, which include the stupidity in over trying to be perfect and that science will always lose to nature.
In short, Alymer tries to play God by ridding Georgiana of her original sin, and make a perfect being. But no mortal can be perfect, and no mortal can not have original sin. Thus when the experiment works, Georgiana achieves perfection and can no longer be a mortal, thus she dies.
symbolism. "Her hand and wrist so finely formed" shows her delicacy but shown as the Virgin
Alymer's categorial thinking leads to idolize his wife. He refuses to allow her fault, instead, he makes her insecure with his incessant stares and questions regarding the virth-mark. He is a perfectionist and will not rest until his wife is flawless, even it may cost her dearly. He even projects his perfectionism onto Georgiana, who says she will go mad if he does not remove ger birth-mark. This is shown when we read about his dream, in whhich he attempts to remove the birth-mark, and though he has discovered that it connects to Georgianas heart, he persists, even to her certain death.
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.
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...
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
The story’s tone is one of romantic controversy, a dilemma at a high level of existence. The scientist’s love for his craft competes very intensively with his newfound love for his wife. It is also very psychological, strictly dealing with the raw mind of its subjects as if the ominous narrator told the story from inside their mind, rather than observe it from the outside. He describes the processes that one may take to reach a certain degree of knowledge and to find the elixir of life, which is described in this story as the ultimate goal of the scientific community. Also, the narrator is very opinionated about events in the story.
...only known as a funeral flower. This again foreshadows the young bride’s death before her allowance of corruption. The mark on her forehead is a symbol of her mistake, a mistake she is never allowed to forget, this can be linked to the view that women are never allowed to forget a mistake made by them. Angela Carter again shows the position of women in society; once a mistake is made you are an outcast in society. This can also be linked to the biblical reference of Cane, ‘him who became an outcast’.
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...
A rose can indicate romance, it’s the flower of love, beauty, courage, and respect. Sula created a relationship with Nel that was full of love. Nel saw this love given to her in the rose shaped pigmentation on her friend’s face. However; the stem covered in thorns represents hurt and pain. When Sula returned to the Bottom 10 years after Nel’s wedding, “the rose mark over Sula’s eye gave [Nel] a glance of startled pleasure. It was darker then Nel remembered” (96). Over their years apart Sula’s birthmark has grown darker, indicating a change in her character. The darkened birthmark implies that over their time apart Nel has started to view Sula’s character in a darker way. In 1937 after Sula slept with Nel’s husband, Jude, Nel broke off their friendship. The year was 1940 when the two childhood friends would cross paths once again. Sula has become sick and Nel decided it was time to visit and check on her. This was “the first time in three years she would be looking at the stemmed rose that hung over the eye of her enemy,” Sula has now become an enemy to her once inseparable friend (139). Nel “would be facing the
There are numerous instances of ambiguity in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”; this essay hopes to explore critics’ comments on that problem within the tale, as well as to analyze it from this reader’s standpoint.
1. Our society tends to be obsessed with the idea of physical perfection. How does our society manifest that obsession? How is the 'Birthmark'; an early version of our modern obsession with physical perfection?
The tone adopted by Hawthorne from the inception of the narrative toward Aylmer urges the reader to respect Aylmer’s scientific ambition—directly his triumph of head over heart, but indirectly his objectification of Georgiana and subsequent attempts to fix something that she never thought was a flaw. Not only is Aylmer’s obsession with getting rid of her birthmark selfish in that he does it for “the sake of giving himself peace” (647) rather than any desire to make his wife happy, he also admits to feeling guilt over his tyrannical treatment of her. For example, his “horror and disgust” in response to her facial blight rarely escapes her notice, and when she reacts poorly to his “convulsive shudder,” he attempts to soothe her and “release her mind from the burden of actual things” (650) as if she is an empty-headed infant in need of a pacifier. Furthermore, in response to her desperate request for its removal, he isolates her from humanity, administers potentially harmful concoctions into her rooms and body without her knowledge, and ultimately—and rapturously—succeeds in shrinking the mark at the cost of her
Firstly, the literary technique symbolism has been used to represent power. The ruby choker, given to the Bride by the Marquis, is a symbol of power. The Bride describes the choker as a ‘choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat...bright as arterial blood’. This depiction is a useful method of representing the Marquis power because the necklace acts like a collar. This signifies how the Marquis behaves like his Bride’s master. (why master?) An example of the Marquis expressing this power is when the Marquis takes the Bride’s virginity. The Marquis tells the Heroine to wear the choker before consummating their marriage; in relation to power, this shows how the Marquis has the right to her body. Moreover, the overwhelming presence of lilies in the bridal chamber represents the loss of virginity. The quote ‘[mirrors] on the wall...reflected more white lilies that I’d ever seen in my life’ (pg10-11). This exhibits the overpowering image of lilies for the reason that lilies in reality connote death or loss, in the context of the story; this is the loss of the Brides virginity. In addition to this, the resemblance of th...
Every man before has always complimented Georgiana on her sweet imperfection. People would tell her all the time that true beauty was in that little blemish. Aylmer, being the man of Science wanted to change what nature had created. Typically, we all know better than to go against Nature, but not Aylmer. Georgiana finally agreed to let her husband remove the birthmark due to a frightening dream Aylmer had encountered. Aylmer started working on a potion to remove Georgiana 's birthmark. As soon as Georgiana sipped the potion, she suddenly falls into a deep coma-like state. The birthmark magically disappears from Georgina 's face. However, as the birthmark fades away, so does Georgina 's life. Hawthorne uses Georgiana 's character to symbolize beauty in this story. Georgiana is already made perfect in the eyes of Nature and all other men, expect Aylmer. Aylmer, representing Science, tries to change Georgiana 's beauty that Nature has created. Aylmer was successful in removing the birthmark, but unsuccessful in keeping Georgiana alive. Aylmer was too intertwined in Science to realize that Georgiana was perfectly made by Nature. Nature paid Aylmer back for trying to correct Georgiana 's face by taking the life of his beloved