Dr. Heidegger's Experiment Symbolism Analysis

Manipulation of Symbolism Conveys Imperfection

Nathaniel Hawthorne short stories, “The Birthmark”, “Young Goodman Brown” and “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” demonstrates the reality of imperfection. In the “Young Goodman Brown” Goodman Brown is under the impression the everyone he knows are good and respectable people till one day he discovers that they were evil. Even his wife, Faith when he finds her pink ribbons at the Salem Witch Trials. Aylmer in “The Birthmark” becomes obsessive over his wife, Georgina only flaw. Her birthmark. In “Dr. Heidegger's experiment”, Dr. Heidegger uses his old friends as an experiment by giving them an elixir that will make them young again. The symbols play a big role in describing the desire of perfection.

Faith represented Goodman Brown's faith. He than loses his faith after going on a journey with Satan himself. Satan shows him that the most respectful people were evil. The pink ribbons represents there is evil in good. Even after that did not affect him till “something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld the pink ribbon”(“Young Goodman Brown”). The color pink represents the combination of red and white. White represents purity, saintly and noble. While red represents evil, sinful and demonic. He learns that everyone one is evil, even himself. In “ The Birthmark” Aylmer wife Georgiana has a Birthmark that is red in the shape of a hand. Georgiana is shown as perfect and having almost any flaws. The only “flaw” she has is her birthmark according to Aylmer. Aylmer says “ if any shifting of motion caused her to turn pale there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow” (“The Birthmark”). He attempts to remove it and succeeds. He wanted Georgiana

Think what sin and shame it would be, if, with you peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age,”(Dr. Heidegger's).

Dr. Heidegger knows that the old men and women think they can fix themselves once they become young again but throughout this story this story the idea that fixing old mistakes will not stop new from occurring. If perfection could not be reached the first time, than it will not the next. Hawthorne’s characters are paranoid about perfection, it is human nature.

Throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne's, stories he creates characters that are paranoid about the idea of perfection. Symbols like the elixir, birthmark and the pink ribbons so how there are flaws and are in everyone. Hawthorne reveals the human mindset that they are immaculate. The idea that everyone has flaws. Aylmer, Goodman Brown and Dr. Heidegger's old men deem that perfection exist, but in Hawthorne stories they all discover that it is unattainable. Human have the tendency to believe that happiness comes from being ideal. It is clever how Hawthorne makes the people around the main characters imperfect. People tend to find flaws in others rather than themselves That is when we began to see faults in