What qualities characterize Aylmer?
Aylmer is often identified with godlike qualities, including his high intelligence and his ability to affect the natural world. He certainly sees himself in a position of utmost power over Georgiana, Aminadab, and nature.
What does the birthmark symbolize for Aylmer What does it symbolize for Georgiana explain why?
Georgiana’s birthmark symbolizes mortality. According to the narrator, every living thing is flawed in some way, nature’s way of reminding us that every living thing eventually dies. The hand-shaped mark on Georgiana’s cheek is the one blemish on an otherwise perfect being, a blemish that marks her as mortal.
What is the lesson in the birthmark?
What is the moral of the story “The Birthmark”? “The Birthmark” deals with the concept of “playing God.” Aylmer believes his wife is perfect, except for the small birthmark on her cheek. Aylmer craves perfection. He believes that by using science, he can fix nature.
Why is Aylmer the protagonist in the birthmark?
Aylmer, the protagonist of Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark,” undertakes to remove the blemish from his wife’s cheek to satisfy his own spiritual strivings and to redeem what he sees as a failed career.
Why was Aylmer so disturbed by the birthmark?
Why is Aylmer so repulsed the birthmark? If he succeeds in removing it, what will it mean to him? He wants to remove it, because he thinks that the birthmark is nature’s way of showing Georgiana’s mortality and necessary humanity.
What does Aylmer desire most strongly?
Aylmer’s desire to make his wife perfect is doomed to failure because perfection, Hawthorne suggests, is the exclusive province of heaven and can’t be found on earth. In fact, the very success of Aylmer’s perfection-inducing potion may doom Georgiana to death.
What specifically is the reason that Aylmer is so horrified by the birthmark on his wife Georgianna’s cheek in other words what does he associate the birthmark with?
What is the irony in the birthmark?
The irony is that the elixir does remove her birthmark, but it also kills her. The elixir destroys her physical beauty in an effort to improve it. It is also ironic that Aylmer is a highly intelligent man, but has no wisdom. He does not see that his wife’s inner beauty is what is really important.
How does Aylmer feel about the birthmark and what does he think it represents?
Aylmer obsesses about the birthmark. For him, it symbolizes mortality and sin and comes to tower over Georgiana’s beauty in his mind. He can think of nothing else. One night she reminds him of a dream he had.
How is Aylmer described when he sees the birthmark disappearing?
How is Aylmer described when he sees the birthmark disappearing? He is still disgusted by it even though it is disappearing.
What does Aylmer do for a living?
Plot summary Aylmer is a brilliant and recognized scientist and philosopher who drops his focus from his career and experiments to marry the beautiful Georgiana (who is physically perfect except for a small red birthmark in the shape of a hand on her cheek).
Why is Aylmer so intent on removing the birthmark?
Aylmer reasons that the birthmark is Nature’s way of showing Georgiana’s mortality and necessary humanity. He wants to remove the mark, then, not because he doesn’t like the way she looks, but because of what the symbol represents to him (see “Symbols, Imagery, Allegory”).
What is the birthmark Aylmer?
The Birthmark Aylmer is an intellectual run amok, a man whose mind has overpowered his sense of decency. An incredibly skilled scientist, he has made many exciting discoveries about the physical world. His inquiries into the spiritual world, however, tend to be more disturbing.
How does Nathaniel Hawthorne present Aylmer in the birth mark?
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” is a story laden with allegory, symbolism, and dualisms that primarily center on the life of the brilliant scientist Aylmer. At the onset of the story, Hawthorne presents Aylmer as someone who is a passionate and knowledgeable experimenter.
What is the summary of the birthmark?
The Birthmark Summary & Analysis. LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Birthmark, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. In the late eighteenth century, a great scientist named Aylmer takes a break from his experiments to marry a beautiful woman named Georgiana.
Why did Aylmer have an obsession with Georgiana’s birthmark?
There is a high likelihood that the increased obsession that Aylmer had with the birthmark on Georgiana’s face could have something to do with the fact that it represented an aspect of mortality of life (Eckstein 511).