Nathaniel+Hawthorne

**//The Birthmark//**

**Summary**: Aylmer suggests an operation to remove Georgiana’s hand-shaped facial birthmark. After his suggestion, he becomes obsessed with her mark, and Georgina becomes embarrassed and eventually angry over his obsession. Georgiana reminds Aylmer of the previous night, when Aylmer had a dream of such an operation, in which he removed the birthmark with a knife, and cut straight through her heart. __Prior__ to the operation, Georgiana faints and Aylmer’s assistant, Aminadab, says he would not remove the mark if she was his wife. While she was alone, Georgiana skims through a few of the books Aylmer has collected. She eventually stumbles upon Aylmer’s personal journal of past experiments. She is terrified to find that most of his experiments have been failures, but Aylmer reassures her that he will not fail. Aylmer shows her the elixir that he believes will remove her birthmark successfully. When the time comes to for Georgiana to drink the eli**xir she does i**t without hesitation. Then she asks for some time to sleep in order for the elixir to work through her body. The experiment turns out to be a success for removing the birthmark. Aylmer is very happy but asks why Georgiana is not joining him in the excitement. She tells him that she is dying, and dies thereafter.


 * Reflection**: **The Birthmark** is a story of being thankful for what God has given you--in Georgiana's case, a birthmark--and understanding that whatever it is, it is something that makes you who you are. In the story, Aylmer insists that the birthmark is hideous and must be removed in emenate Georgiana's true beauty. However, a person such as Aylmer must not hinder his love for his wife due to her **outter** **appearence**, but must instead love her for who she is internally. When Aylmer attempts to alter his wife's situation, it results in an utter failure because he attempts to change the beauty the God has already created. Others take a slightly different approach on the interpretation on this story however, as "some critics contend that the theme of the story is that human perfection can only be achieved in death and therefore not reachable at all, in that the trademark foreshadowing occurred during Aylmer's dream of cutting out the mark, in which he discovers the birthmark is connected to Georgiana's heart (which consequentially he would have to cut up in order to fully remove the 'blemish' (The Birth-Mark)."


 * Corelation:**
 * Obsession**: The theme of obsession was seen within this story in a negative aspect. Aylmer was the first one to be unhappy with Geogiana's birthmark. His obsession with his desire to remove it carried over to make Georgiana want to remove it as well, making her obsessed with her mark in a negative way too.


 * Love:** Within the story, Aylmer had two passions in life-- one of those being that of science, and the other the love for his wife. However, his love of science out-weighed the love of his life due to the fact that he was willing to use science to interfere with and attempt to alter what beauty God had already given his wife. Aylmer loved Georgiana undoubtably, but perhaps he just using her as another test subject to prove to himself that he truley wasn't a failure.


 * Selfishness**: Aylmer truley shows selfishness within this story, providing that he is unhappy with his wife's beauty for how she already is, and insists that she must be changed to eliminate her hideous mark. He pays sadly in the end as his wife dies as the result of his unhappiness, discontenment, and selfishness.

Reference "The Birth-Mark -." //Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia//. Web. 24 Nov. 2009. .