Essay On Eye Of The Beholder And The Birthmark

The “Eye of the Beholder” and “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne depict the nature of beauty and its perception by others. Hawthorne uses symbolism, and imagery to depict the husband’s attempt to remove his wife’s birthmark,whereas The Twilight Zone uses foreshadowing and other devices to show that the woman cannot be changed so she will be considered “normal”. Both use similar devices to convey an overall theme of beauty as a fictitious standard.

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The birthmark is a symbol for Georgina’s own mortality, which Aylmer sees as her faults.

“The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould”

b. Hawthorne utilizes imagery to contrast the laboratory filled with all of Alymer’s failures and his experiments while the boudoir has all of what he has

The “Eye of the Beholder” uses imagery differently than “The Birthmark”, partly because of the nature of the two mediums. In EOTB the every character’s face is concealed until the end to make the watcher assume that what they look like fit western standards of beauty. However, once the nurse’s face is revealed to be closer to a pig than an average person the audience is shown how beauty is really in the eyes of the beholder. The constant concealment of the character’s faces, whether it is by bandages or by shadows. Then the final reveal where we see all of the different but ultimately similar character’s faces at the end.

C. The “Eye of the Beholder” uses foreshadowing as a device to make the audience question throughout what they are actually watching.

As Rod Serling delivers his monologue in the middle of the episode explaining that we are about to see what is under the woman’s bandages, the doctor and nurse conversing about the woman’s ugliness.

Conclusion

While “The Birthmark” and the “Eye of the Beholder” both use imagery, and symbolism to convey the overall theme of beauty as a fictitious standard, they use the devices