The Text “The Birth-Mark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a story about interpretation and its lethal consequences. Hawthorne tells the story of Aylmer, a man of science, who is set on finding a way to remove his wife, Georgiana’s birth mark from her cheek to finally make her ‘perfect’. To the common eye, the birthmark appears to be a small, red handprint on a stunningly beautiful face, but to Aylmer, this mark is a penetrating stain on the face of his “nearly perfect” wife. In the end, his interpretations surrounding the birthmark cause him to lose his wife. As a man of science and alchemy, Aylmer is always trying to find answers and meaning within the world. Now retired, he no longer has the opportunity to make sense of things and now turns towards his wife’s birthmark to find meaning in it. The most common way for us to find meaning is through interpretation. According to Nietzsche, “interpretation is itself a means to becoming a master of something” (Nietzsche 643). Aylmer interprets the mark on his wife’s cheek to be a sign of imperfection and sin. Georgiana’s birthmark baffles him as he needs to know why it is there, so by …show more content…
As humans, we often seek to find meaning and answers for everything as it is an easier way of living. “Negative Capability” suggests that we try to live in a world without fact and reasoning and live in a world of mystery. Once Aylmer concludes that Georgiana’s birthmark is a flaw, he can only ever see it that way. This is clear when Hawthorne writes, “but seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives” (Hawthorne 221). This “tunnel vision” leads to Aylmer’s obsession and infatuation with Georgiana’s birthmark and ultimately drives him to find a way to remove the unpleasant and disturbing mark as it taints her