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Use Of Literary Devices In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Birthmark

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“Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life”. (Barbara Kingsolver) Fiction is an imaginary thing or event, postulated for the purposes of argument or explanation as defined by Dictionary.com. There are many literary devices that writers incorporate into their works. The main reason literary devices are used is to connect with the reader. When we read, we want to truly enjoy what is written we need to become a part of the story. And literary devices help us to better see and feel the storyline. A good storyline captures all of our senses, these devices draw the reader in, paint a picture, heighten the senses, and pull at us emotionally. Throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story The Birthmark, some of the key literary devices used were irony symbol and theme. …show more content…

It describes him as “Proficient in every branch of natural philosophy”, (Hawthorne, 365) to the extent that he even discovered an elixir that he could determine if a man would drop dead instantly or linger out years after only of a breath of this substance. We see a great irony in how intelligent Aylmer is, and yet how many scientific mistakes he makes. When he uses the elixir of life upon the flower, it grows beautifully but also self-combusts. He then tells Georgiana he will need to use a much stronger substance on her, in order to fix her birthmark. The flower very obviously foreshadows Georgiana’s death, and the result proves that Aylmer’s science can produce extremely unpredictable results. Yet, Aylmer fails to recognise that he must proceed with caution, such an irony considering his large bank of

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Not only is his obsession over his wife’s health concerning, but it is made apparent that Alymer’s genius is the accumulation of failures. As Georgiana finds, while reading through his records, “his most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed” (Hawthorne 8). There is a strange irony, that Alymer, who for all his genius has done nothing but fail at his aspirations, sought to create perfection in another person. Sadly, perfection is not only subjective, but as Hawthorne demonstrates, it is unobtainable. When Aylmer reveals the progress he has made on fixing his wife’s mark, he uses a flower as a demonstration.

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“The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust” (Hawthorne 1322). The birthmark represents Georgiana’s mortality and humanity. Morality links to imperfection because that’s what being human means. Aylmer wants to make Georgiana perfect, which is impossible, but that is his goal. To make someone perfect or immortal would give Aylmer the control that he so badly yearns

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Hawthorne uses imagery sense of smell to get readers to imagine the scene, “When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had recalled her from her deathlike faintness” (Hawthorne). “The Birthmark” also creates irony with “Aminadab, the less inferior man to Aylmer is the one who speaks sensible to Aylmer by disclaiming that if Georgiana was his wife, he would not try to remove the birthmark” (“The Birthmark”). The figurative language helps enhance the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s meaning for the story was a man’s strive to perfection only caused the death of his wife. Aylmer was too focused on what perfect could be, and Georgiana blindly agrees with him and decides to remove the birthmark, despite never having a problem with it.

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When Aylmer and Georgiana got married, Georgiana was taken from her mothers home, making her complete dependent on Aylmer and his opinions. In addition to this, Aylmer’s belief hat he is better than God, and has the ability to remove Georgiana’s birthmark, creates inequality in their relationship. Finally, due to Georgiana’s obsession with what Aylmer thinks of her, paired with Aylmer's rude looks and comments, leads her to do something

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Hawthorne Before reading the story the only thing I knew about Nathanial Hawthorne was that he wrote The Scarlet Letter. I have never read The Scarlet Letter but after reading the “The Birthmark” I will now. I believe that Hawthorne wants to tell his reads that all mortal things are flawed or unperfected. If we want perfection on earth it does not exists. If we want perfection it is only located in heaven creatures.

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He provides the story with a character that identifies contrast between the others. He is Aylmer's assistant although we tend to get the impression that he may actually be smarter than Aylmer in a way. As he realizes that Aylmer has killed Georgiana, he begins to laugh. He believes that Aylmer has simply got what was coming to him. He warned him that she already is perfect and says, “If she were my wife, I'd never part with that birthmark”(208).

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Without imperfections, there is no reason to live and the consequences following a quest for perfection can have immense consequences. Aylmer learns that perfection is an impossible feat when he attempts to remove his wife’s birthmark and in turn is responsible for her death. His obsession with perfection is the fatal flaw that many people possess and in his case leads to the loss of love and life, a lesson Hawthorne chose to prove within his writing of this

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For a man that strives such great perfection it has become his mission to convince his wife of removing it and finding a way to do so. To Aylmer the hand is “crimson” (304), a reminder of sin and immortality increasing his obsession with removing it. This obsession with perfecting what’s imperfect strays him from seeing the good in his wife, causing him to kill her in the end. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s

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Aylmer is trying to change something that Nature has produced, and in most cases, man loses when playing God. The birthmark fades as the wife dies. Hawthorne wrote a story injected with symbols about the dangers of symbols. Why would he do that? Examples are often times the best ways to teach and learn.

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In Hawthorne’s story, Aylmer makes numerous statements that lead the reader to believe that Aylmer can be labeled as a murderer. In the beginning of the story, Aylmer explains to the reader his love for the beautiful woman he married. As the story goes on the reader learns that the mark grows more irritating to Aylmer every day, and now through Aylmer’s eyes, Georgiana loses her beauty. The mark disturbs Aylmer.

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This overriding confidence makes him blind to his past failures and logical sense. Georgiana pointes out the faults Aylmer’s past experiments by saying, “His brightest diamonds were the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in comparison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his reach.” (Hawthorne, 217). This shows that Aylmer always reached for the unreliable and impossible overcomes when experimenting. This raises concern when Aylmer focuses on using his own wife as an experiment rather than the love of his life.

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Aylmer displays his contempt toward Georgiana’s birthmark when he talks in his sleep. Subsequently, the very next morning Georgiana tells Aylmer, “Life is not worth living while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror… remove this little mark for the sake of your peace and my own.” Seeing the level of Georgiana’s distress, Aylmer could easily drop the topic by telling her the birthmark is in fact a charm, but he does not. Instead, Aylmer proceeds by taking Georgiana to his laboratory to be experimented on. After Georgiana drinks many of Aylmer’s home made chemicals , Aylmer walks into the room and tells Georgiana, “I have already given you chemicals powerful enough to change your entire physical system.

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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

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As Georgiana reveals her true sentiments about her stigma, she states with a sense of pride, “To tell you the truth, it has been so often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so” (Hawthorne 378). In expressing this sense of pride, Georgiana exudes her initial happiness with her birthmark, as she rebuttals with Aylmer. Even in this moment, Hawthorne extracts the mission of Aylmer, as he says, “Until now he had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and the lengths which he might find in his heart to go, for the sake of giving himself peace” (Hawthorne 380). This selfish statement, causes for readers to recognize that Aylmer was aware that it would be no simple task to convince his muse that it is necessary to change her indifference.

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The flower represents man 's attempts to duplicate Nature, and even though the flower was described as “perfect and lovely” in the story, the flower can’t rival nature’s creations. The fact that the flower quickly turns black and dies after Georgina touches it can indicate that Aylmer 's experiments can have consequences, and that his wife may die soon.

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