Journal Five- The Birth-Mark

The story, The Birth-Mark by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is about a man named Alymer who is a very nature-oriented scientist. He really enjoys his work and he even set aside time to marry a beatiful woman named Georgiana. Georgiana is a very beatiful woman, but she has a small flaw. She has a birthmark on her cheek and it is red and it is quite small, but even still, Alymer does not like the birthmark. In fact, he hates it. He would rather have it removed from her face and only then he says will she be perfect.
Even after the marriage to such a beatiful woman, Alymer cannot seem to get over the birthmark and makes Georgiana feel horrible about herself. Soon, their marriage starts to fall apart because Georgiana thinks of herself as ugly. Alymer soon has a dream that she had the birthmark surgically removed and he tells her that the deeper that he tried to cut the birthmark off the deep the birthmark seemed to be in her skin. He tells her that the birthmark even went all the way to her heart and he didnt mind wanting to keep cutting through her heart to get the birthmark out.
Alymer and his partner, Aminadab, have been coming up with the creation he calls exilir to remove the birthmark. Georgiana agrees to the procedure after being so upset by Alymer's dream. Alymer brings the drink to Georgiana and after drinking it she falls asleep. Aminadab laughs when she falls asleep. The birthmark does fade almost all the way from her face, but when she wakes up she tells Alymer that she is dying. She, in turn, dies and Aminadab laughs again.
The story ends with a description telling the reader that no human is perfect and that Georgiana died because she was now perfect without the birthmark, but no human is perfect, so she is now dead. The narrator states that Alymer "failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present" (324), basically saying that he could not see past the birthmark and now has lost his beautiful wife in the process. Now he must live with what he has done.


Work Cited


Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. "The Birth-Mark." The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2010. 313-24. Print