Guilt Damns Us All Analysis

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“Guilt Damns Us All” The story, “The Birthmark”, fully embodies the statement that guilt can damn us all. In this, Hawthorne depicts the relationship between guilt and lust, guilt through pursuit of perfection, as well as guilt disguised as love. He uses the theme of guilt to reveal a valuable moral: nothing in this world has the ability to obtain perfection. As the guilt draws to an end it is transformed into despair. Georgiana is a beautiful woman, whose only flaw is the human feeling of love; in which she loves her husband unconditionally and gives her all to him. Every man she comes in contact with lust over her and believes that she is amazing. She never once contemplated leaving her husband for one of the men that follow her around and treat her likes the true angel she is; in-stead she stays with her unsatisfied husband. He is unsatisfied because Georgiana is not perfect in every single way; for Georgiana has a small birthmark on her right cheek, a crimson hand as if a fairy has placed its hand upon her. Her husband, Aylmer, grows more and more annoyed with her only imperfection as every day passes. He eventually guilts…show more content…
Aylmer shows his weakness when he sacrifices the closest thing to perfect in his world, his wife, to his work and obsession for control over her. Georgiana, likewise, shows weakness when she chooses death to make her husband happy as opposed to finding anyone else that would have done everything in there power to love and respect her even with the birthmark. Aminadab, who is not, mentioned much throughout this story but, he is just as important as Aylmer and Georgiana. He tells Aylmer, “If she were my wife, I’d never part with that birthmark.” This depicts the characteristic of Aminadab, a man of nature rather than a man of science. Therefore, his main flaw; he should have not departed from nature to work with a man of
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