Compare And Contrast The Birthmark And The Scarlet Letter

The structure of a story can either make or break the book being written. The Birthmark and The Scarlet Letter, both by Nathaniel Hawthorne, are both effective in the ways they were written. The birthmark is a short story that teaches a life lesson. Hawthorne was effective in the way he structured this specific story since he didn’t dwell on history and small details. The Scarlet Letter was very effective and the structure played a huge role in that. Hawthorne deliberately focused on connections between the reader, characters and the narrator. By doing this he purposely made us feel certain ways about the characters in the book. Both of these texts came across as effective but they both accomplished it in their own way. The Birthmark is a short story about a married couple named Aylmer and Georgiana. Aylmer was a very skilled scientist who struggled to love both the science and his wife. After

He leads us to have a connection with the narrator in such an odd way, which The Birthmark doesn’t exactly do as effectively. He writes in a way to make us feel a specific feeling towards specific characters. He also keeps the story moving to keep us very intrigued. In each chapter there is something new that draws us in and has us shocked. It’s as if he structured it to have little conflicts each chapter. Right away Hawthorne puts us in a place where we see Hester walk out of the prison with the letter “A” on her chest for the crime she has committed. Hester is described as “Tall and elegant… her beauty radiated like a halo to obscure the clouds of misfortune that surrounded her” (Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter). Already we are taken by surprise by the fact that she is so confident when really she should be humiliated. With that Hawthorne likes to keep us on the edge of our seats by not revealing Hester's lover until later on in the book. He makes us question and even asks questions throughout the book to keep us