Sacrifice In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Birthmark

When I first read The Birthmark, I thought it was a sad story between a couple. Four weeks later, I still think what happen to Georgiana is a tragedy. However, I have developed some new understandings regarding the author’s background, and the story’s theme and characters. The reason I chose this story is because I am facinated by the development of Georgiana’s character and how the story tackles current issue in the soceity. Hawthorne is a transcendentalist who believed in the “inherent goodness of both people and nature”.(Americanliterarture.com) Transcendentalist thinks nature and intuition is more important than scientific knowledge.(yourdictionary.com) Such notion has influenced one of the main character, Alymer, who believes that removing his wife’s birthmark will make her perfect. Alymer’s belief is important because the idea of the story is about how to use science against nature, which is a contridiction to Hawthorne’s belief. When I read the story for the second time, I noticed that the author does not mention anything about Alymer’s appearance, age or background. We only know that he is an ambitious scientist who is motivated to change the natural with the use of science. By creating such a fictional character,

After reading the story, I think the birthmark is a symbol of death. The hand shaped mark predicts the death of Georgiana at the end of the story. Alymer misinterpreted this birthmark, he thinks it is a flaw made by the hand of nature. However, he did not realize that it is the nature and he could not change it. In the end of the story, the author mentioned that “the momentary circumstance was too strong for him: he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all eternity, to find the perfect future in the present”. (Hawthorne) Hawthorne stated this in the end because he wanted remind Alymer the truth regarding changing what is