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Symbolism In Nathaniel Hawthorne's In The Birth-Mark

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The Romantic period was a very influential time for the arts, literature, and intellectual thinking in Europe. During this time, there was especially many talented writers who wrote romantic short stories. One of the most famous Romantic writers of the time was Nathaniel Hawthorne. Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist who specialized in dark romantic writing such as the “Birth-Mark.” In the “Birth-Mark,” Hawthorne uses symbolism to portray the sinfulness and imperfections of humans. Hawthorne’s view of man is that humans are not perfect and all-knowing, while humans have our own opinion and consider ourselves to be nonpareil because of our dominance and intellectuality. Humans have many qualities that deem them to be the superior organism. Compared to other creatures such as the dog, monkey, or any other animal, humans have the quality of being intellectual because of our rational soul. This reasoning portion within each of us is what discerns what is real and not apparent. Besides the rational psyche, there are two other kinds of souls appetitive and sensible. Appetitive is the ability to want to eat or desire hunger; sensible is the capability to …show more content…

This concept of imperfection is shown in the story when Aylmer experiments and tries to remove Georgianna’s birthmark repeatedly but fails. This conclusive evidence proves that the utopian human can never exist, which is the moral of the story. In the story, Hawthorne does not view humans faultless because when Aylmer removes the birthmark on Georgianna, she becomes flawless and ends up dying. The perfection that humans believe they have is just the imagination of their minds. It is a basic theoretical concept but not an attribute of the metaphysical world. Hawthorne portrays this concept though a character named Aylmer, a young scientist, who believes that he can defile the makings of

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