The Birthmark Essay

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The Birthmark “The Birthmark,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is about a scientist who is obsessed with removing a birthmark from his wife's cheek. This lesson will take a gander at the topics of over the top love and the contention amongst science and nature. It also focuses on how man tries to challenge nature and love. By doing this he ends up losing the women he loves. The main character is a scientist named Aylmer and he is the husband of Georgiana. His intentions are good for a husband but he is also a selfish man that makes a brutal decision that ends up ending his wife’s life. Aylmer’s wife is a beautiful, caring, and loving woman but the only problem is that she has a small red birthmark on her left cheek. Aylmer tells his wife that he is unhappy with the birthmark and that he wants it removed, by him saying this it makes her very sad so she tells him that he can remove it. He knows that the procedure is risky but he …show more content…

Aylmer also shows actions of thinking he can’t fail. While the entire focus of the story is on Georgiana's one physical flaw, which is her mark, it is Aylmer who seems to be flawed with a lot of things. The concept of "playing god" and a man obsessed with attaining divine perfection, becomes unreasonably fixed on his wife's one imperfection, going so far as wanting to kill her just to dispose of it. Aylmer's attitude throughout the story is suggestive of a God complex. His goal in life has been to conquer nature, as seen by his experiment with Georgiana and his description of various potions he has made to beat mortality and imperfection into submission. However, his own perfection and godlike personality is jeopardized by his big pride, and instead of being deified, "he becomes a devil like symbol. His non-acceptance of his own humanity for an imperfection makes failure inevitable, since his ideal is

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