Aylmer's Symbolism In 'The Birthmark' By Nathaniel Hawthorne

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In the short story, “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The main character Aylmer realizes his wife's imperfections and tries to change her for forever. Told in 3rd person point-of-view, Hawthorne supports this idea by showing that he loves his wife very much but her having that birthmark isn't good enough and that sometimes changing people has consequences which develop the conflict between Aylmer and his wife and incorporating many symbols throughout the story. Hawthorne’s purpose in the story is to examine how people deal will other people's flaws and how they try to change them. Hawthorne begins his story by showing how Aylmer does not like her birthmark and how he wants to remove it. Aylmer in the story is a big scientist and it starts off with him only caring about science. He eventually puts down his test tubes long enough to marry his beautiful wife Georgiana. Once they are married he starts to realize that she has a birthmark on her face the shape of a hand …show more content…

She starts to get all depressed and makes her feel uncomfortable about her mark. In the end, Aylmer tries to remove the mark and when doing so he ends up killing his wife. The mark was connected to her life and when you take it from her she can't live anymore. That shows how there are some consequences for when you try to change people. That is how in the story the, “The Birthmark” Aylmer the main character develops conflict between him and his wife and suffers the consequences from trying to change her. By him wanting to change his wife it made her very depressed. It made her feel awful about her birthmark and started to change her. In the end when she agrees to get it removed Aylmer kills his wife because the mark is connected to her life source. That is how this story shows that changing people lead to