1/24/07

The Birthmark: Response

The Birthmark is a short story of a man named aylmer and his wife Georgina. Gerogina is the pesonification of beauty. She is very young and has many men who would love to claim her as their own. However geogina falls for Aylmer. Aylmer is not young and not handsome, but he is a passion driven scientist. Georgina is intrigued by Aylmer. Georgina, despite having spent time together before thir marrige, know little of eachother. Georgina covers her intelligence whith a coat if inocence and youthful comments and Aylmer does whatever it takes to cover his obsessions and his failed career.
As the story progresses Georgina investigates the real Aylmer and he discovers her intelligence. Georgina's only flaw is a small hand shaped birthmark on her cheek. Aylmer's scientific interests and sort of quest for perfection is what leads him to convincing Georgina to remove teh birthmark. She, wishing to please her husband agrees to teh proceedure. It is then it is revealed the true insanity of her husband. Fore shadowing throughout the story leads us to the ending of the ending of the story and Geogina's death.
It is in Georgina's death that we see the true relation of the text to technnology vs. nature. Aylmer sucessfuly removes teh mark, but despite his victory of sorts her problems still remaine. Being teh scientist he is Aylmer can not be happy with what her has. He strives to make absoloutly everything better. Even his beautiful, young and perfect wife is not what he desires. The last line of the text states, " ; he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once of all eternity, to find the perfect future in the present." Some times it is the "imperfections" in nature that make nature perfect. It is not perfection that is perfect, but your perception of perfection that matters.

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