The Dream Passage in The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Literary Essay Example)

In the opening of the dream passage excerpt from “The Birthmark,” Nathaniel Hawthorne uses figurative language to create a disappointed and disapproving tone.  The birthmark was seen by many as a symbol of beauty and mystery.  The majority of people who saw the birthmark saw it as an addition to an already perfect Georgiana.  However, Alymer saw the mark as an imperfection and a stain on his wife’s beauty.  In the passage, he saw the mark as, “the crimson hand,” and a, “symbol of imperfection.”  Hawthorne uses figurative language throughout the story to convey a tone of disgust and horror towards the birthmark.  

Georgiana wants her husband to love her again, but with Alymer’s detachment from her, she doesn’t feel like there is any love or emotion in their marriage.  Throughout the passage, Georgiana desperately tries to win her husband’s love back, trying to use emotion like, “a gush of tears,” but Alymer doesn’t give in.  He uses a “dry, cold tone” to convey a mood of depression around couples' love life.  Alymer hates his wife’s imperfection so much that he won’t even use emotion towards her.  Alymer sees his wife as just another experiment that he can work with, and unless it is perfect, he won’t get attached to it.  During the dialogue between Alymer and Georgiana, Georgiana is almost crying, hoping that her husband will show any emotion towards her other than that of disgust.  Alymer, on the other hand, actively tries to show no emotion whatsoever.  This dysfunction between the two shows a conflict between the characters that could only be solved through the removal of Georgiana’s imperfection.

When Alymer recalls his dream, Hawthorne foreshadows the ending of the story through the dream.  The dream involves Alymer and his servant Aminadab using a knife to try and take out the birthmark.  The birthmark refuses to move out of place, so Alymer and Aminadab continue to move deeper and deeper into Georgiana’s body until they reach her heart.  Alymer, realizing that taking out the heart is the only way to get rid of the birthmark, he, “was inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.”  This dream ends up becoming reality very quickly in the story, and Georgiana eventually dies from the procedure.  Hawthorne’s use of foreshadowing symbolises the unrealistic need for perfection.  As Alymer realizes that his only way to remove the birthmark is to also remove Georgiana’s heart, it shows that it was the heart, not the birthmark, that was imperfect.  Towards the end of the story, Hawthorne communicates how the, “truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep.”  If Alymer wants perfection in everything, he needs to kill everyone by taking out their hearts.  Through Hawthorne’s detailed words, he implies that no one is perfect, because everyone has a heart.  This exhibits the pointless need for perfection that Hawthorne wants to convey.  

Alymer begins to see his wife as a symbol of imperfection, and something that he needs to fix.  The tone, mood, and foreshadowing of the excerpt conveys a theme of obsession.  With obsessing over the birthmark, Alymer begins to see Georgiana less as a human, and more as a test subject that he feels no emotion towards.  Alymer begins to show a dry, dreary tone as well as an detached and obsessed mood to convey to Georgiana that they will not have a good marriage or love life unless she is perfect in every way.  The foreshadowing of Alymers dream illustrates Alymers obsession for perfection, and how he will go to any lengths over something he obsesses over.  Considering Hawthorne wrote this short story in 1843, it is possible to infer that Hawthorne was commenting on the unrealistic beauty standards of the time, especially the beauty standards that women face.  These standards are still prevalent today, and until this unnecessary obsession for beauty is gone, this book's theme will continue to show the flaws of the world.