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What Is The Symbolism In The Birthmark

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“The Birthmark by Nathaniel is a short story about a man wanting to perfect his wife. His main purpose in life becomes to find a process that will remove the birthmark from his beautiful wifes Georgina's face. Analyzing the story further, the reader can use symbolism, point of view/tone, and setting to better understand the conflict between nature and science. One can analyze “The Birthmark” by understanding the symbolism found throughout the story. The actual birthmark is a small red hand shaped mark in the middle of Georgiana's left cheek. In Aylmer’s eyes she was the “nearly perfect from the hand of Nature” (Hawthorne). Since then he has been on the quest for perfection and just seeing the mark on her face disturbs him. It reminds him of his wife's mortality and humanity. “To explain this conversation it must be mentioned that in the centre of Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face.” (Hawthorne). Because this paragraph states that the birthmark is deeply woven into her face, it can be talking about Aylmers flaws as a man.It is also …show more content…

By doing so the reader is allowed to see both Aylmer's and Georgina's thoughts. Instead of accepting her imperfection he devotes his life to find a was to remove the birthmark from her face. By moralizing the entire story, the reader misses out on the actual thoughts and feelings of how Aylmer felt about Georgina's death. Hawthorne used this to teach the reader a lesson about the strive for perfection. American modern short stories are often written by passionate narrators who often included their own opinions into the point of view, it is believed that Hawthorne did just that. Others argue that there were in fact two different voices being interpreted. The tone can be described as dark and sinister leaving the reader to foreshadow that ending will not end

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Intro: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fictional short story “The Birthmark” and The Twilight Zone’s darkly romantic episode “Eye of the Beholder” both use gothic elements and delve into the realm of science to explore concepts of beauty and perfection. Through their contrasting characterizations of the scientist and employments of irony and allusions, each work comes to its own conclusions about how to define and treat beauty. Body #1: The Birthmark From the very first paragraph, Hawthorne’s story revolves around Aylmer, a scientist who supposedly gives up his career to marry the beautiful woman of his dreams, Georgiana.

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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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Aylmer is consumed with a pursuit of perfection in his scientific studies and also in nature. The leads to Aylmer being appalled at the blemish on his wife Georgiana’s cheek. He tells Georgiana “you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature, that this slightest possible defect..shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection” (216). This is the catalyst for Aylmer's seeking for perfection in his wife who is a natural being. Aylmer recognizes that there is a “fatal flaw of humanity, which Nature...stamps ineffaceable on all her productions” (216).

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