As in all of Hawthorne’s writings when one finishes reading his stories you come up with more questions than answers. No other writer makes you question like Hawthorne. The philosophical question of what is true perfection and may it be achieved through physical means or is it a state of the spirit is the heart of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story The Birth-Mark.

Aylmer, the main reputation of the story is a brilliant scientist/alchemist. He posses a faith in “man’s extreme control over nature”, and thinks there is not one thing man can’t master or achieve. His obsession with his wife’s little imperfect birth mark, which resembles a hand, begins shortly after they become married. Aylmer is fixated with his wife Georgiana’s perfection; he believes that in order for him to experience perfective love, he will have to have a perfective woman to love. His obsession gradually becomes Georgiana’s obsession at which point she becomes so distraught that she tells Aylmer “Remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life”. Aylmer sits down and tells his wife that there may be peril involved but he is convinced that he shall remove the mark and his beauteous bride will be perfective in each way. He sets up comfortable surroundings for his wife described as “beautiful apartments, not unfit to be the secluded abode of a lovely woman”. After the alchemist attempts and fails some methods for removing the mark from his wife he gives rise to a “perfect elixir” that will without a doubt heal her and make her wholly perfect. He administers this elixir and to his great delight sees the cursed hand commence to fade and disappear; only to have his wife tell him “Aylmer-dearest Aylmer-I am dying!”

Georgiana achieved perfection in Aylmer’s eyes in her dying moments; so did he Aylmer achieve what he set out to accomplish? I believe he did. Aylmer was a man who loved his work; he loved science more than he could ever love any humane being. He was a man riddled with his inadequacies and imperfections, and as a result of his low view of himself, he demanded perfection in his wife. This is exhibited when Georgiana is reading out of his ledger which is described as a “sad confession, and continual exemplification, of the short-comings of the composite man”. Aylmer was a self serving person whose only goal is to make his wife perfective for his own sake or perhaps for science’s sake. All these things being true; I do believe he loved Georgiana, and in his own bizarre way he wanted her to be perfective for her sake, because he believed that she deserved no less. In his quest for her perfection (which is inconceivable in the strictly material sense) he destroyed her.

Aylmer’s wife Georgiana was at initial a happy woman; married to somebody she believed to be a great man, until one day her husband tells her that the mark upon her cheek might be removed. This of course is the beginning of her as well as her husband’s obsession with removing her one imperfection. The initial thing that stuck out in my mind with regards to Georgiana was her undying love, commitment and desire to please her husband. This was very much a mark of the time. The fact that she would rather die than meet his disapproval I found significant. She seemed to me, to be the uttermost exemplification of love and unselfishness, to an insane level, which is exhibited in the line “You have purposed loftily! – You have done nobly! Do not repent, that, with so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best world could offer.” Georgiana does not feel ill towards her husband because she believes his sensations to be those of pure love.

The Birthmark touches on similar themes as Marry Shelly’s Frankenstein in the idea that humans may possess a supernatural power to undo and make perfective what is imperfect. Aylmer does not believe in God or the natural laws he created, which is evident by his faith in man’s extreme control over nature. God invented man as a percentage of nature and we are not above nature but integrated with it. Just as today we are fighting the ethical issues of an increased understanding of science versus what we know to be natural law. Hawthorne’s story The Birth Mark is just as applicable today as it was when written in 1843 if not more so. Today we are engaged in a struggle with issues such as cloning, stem cell exploration and other distinct elements of science that seem in contradiction with God’s and nature’s laws. If confronted with the progressed day issues we now face Hawthorne’s views would in all likelihood be the same as he has set forth in this short story; that when man tries to accomplish what he was not intended to accomplish disaster will be the extreme result. The hand was not only a birthmark but an integral portion of Georgiana’s soul, and removing this mark in the quest for perfection was her demise.

Hawthorne is telling us that humanity is imperfect, there is no perfection in the physical sense, and the only way to achieve perfection is through the spirit in death. The Christian parallel is clear here; none of us are perfective and the only way to become perfective is to become one with God, in death, which results in our going to heaven. This goes back to what makes us who we are; we are not pure flesh and blood, our psyches and our unfeigned selves go so much further beyond that.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story The Birth Mark touches on philosophical and ethical issues valid in his time, as well as ours. His work makes us think with regards to what is perfection and is it desirable in the physical state. In the end we discover that if we overstep our bounds and try to make perfective that which is imperfect, death will be the final result, for only in death through God, may we achieve perfection.

by John Schlismann

Alchemist

“My heart is frighted that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.” Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of it is dreams.”

The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and throughout the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist.

The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, with regards to the necessary wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, above all, following our dreams.

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of it is readers forever. The Alchemist is such a book. With over a million and a half copies sold around the world, The Alchemist has already traditionalisti itself as a innovative classic, universally admired. Paulo Coelho’s charming fable, now available in English for the primary time, will enchant and inspire an even wider audience of readers for generations to come.

ReviewLike the one-time bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Alchemist presents a simple fable, based on simple truths and places it in a highly distinctive situation. And though we may sniff a bestselling formula, it is surely not a new one: even the ancient tribal storytellers knew that this is the most successful method of agreeably diverting an audience while slipping in a lesson or two. Brazilian storyteller Paulo Coehlo introduces Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who one night dreams of a distant treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. And so he’s off: leaving Spain to in a literal sense follow his dream.

Along the way he meets a good deal of spiritual messengers, who come in unassuming forms such as a camel driver and a well-read Englishman. In one of the Englishman’s books, Santiago basi learns regarding the alchemists–men who believed that if a metal were heated for galore years, it would free itself of all it is person properties, and what was left would be the “Soul of the World.” Of course he does ultimately meet an alchemist, and the ensuing student-teacher kinship clarifies much of the boy’s misguided agenda, while likewise emboldening him to stay unfeigned to his dreams. “My heart is scared that it will have to suffer,” the boy confides to the alchemist one night as they look up at a moonless night.

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself,” the alchemist replies. “And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of it is dreams, because each second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.” –Gail Hudson

From Publishers WeeklyThis inspirational fable by Brazilian author and translator Coelho has been a runaway bestseller all around Latin America and seems poised to achieve the same prominence here. The charming tale of Santiago, a shepherd boy, who dreams of seeing the world, is compelling in it is own right, but gains resonance through the a lot of lessons Santiago learns for the duration of his adventures. He journeys from Spain to Morocco in search of worldly success, and in the end to Egypt, where a fateful encounter with an alchemist brings him at last to self-understanding and spiritual enlightenment. The story has the comic charm, dramatic tension and psychological intensity of a fairy tale, but it’s full of specific wisdom as well, in regards to getting self-empowered, overcoming depression, and believing in dreams. The cumulative effect is like hearing a wondrous bedtime story from an inspirational psychiatrist. Comparisons to The Little Prince are appropriate; this is a sweetly exotic tale for young and old alike. 50,000 primary printing; $50,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library JournalYA– This simple, yet eloquent parable celebrates the richness of the humane spirit. A young Spanish shepherd seeking his fate travels to Egypt where he learns a lot of lessons, peculiarly from a wise old alchemist. The real alchemy here, however, is the transmuting of youthful idealism into mature wisdom. The blending of established ideas with an exotic setting makes old truths seem new again. This shepherd takes the counsel Hamlet did not heed, learning to trust his heart and commune with it as a precious friend. Enjoyable and easy to read, this timeless fantasy validates the aspirations and dreams of youth.
- Sabrina Fraunfelter, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Most helpful customer reviews

557 of 581 people found the following review helpful.
Flawed But Ultimately Thought-Provoking and Worthwhile
By Kenny O.
Yes, much of what negative reviewers of this book have to say is true: the writing is blunt and simple, the characters lack depth and complexity, it is quite male-focused in its subject matter and language, it has a bunch of quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo, and so on. This book should not be put on the list of great literature for the ages. There are doubtless many novels that cover subject matter from this book far more artfully. As I read the book, I was aware of its hokeyness and lack of redeeming literary qualities. I am, in fact, usually the first person to criticize books that read like this.

And yet, I have to say – and I feel a bit sheepish about this – that I found it meaningful, even profound at times. How can I say this, given my criticisms? First of all, unlike many reviewers, I did not approach this book with great expectations. No one told me that this was Shakespeare or Tolstoy; I had never even heard of it until it was recommended to me recently. And by the end of page 2, I had adjusted my expectations further. This clearly was not going to be winning the Booker prize.

But I found the book moving in its simple way. The characters deliver their statements without subtlety, but subtlety is more a literary virtue than a philosophical one. In fact, I essentially came to view this work as a life philosophy expressed as a fable, so I didn’t particularly mind that its messages were not buried far beneath the surface.

Are those messages novel? No, but what of it? Novelists have been recycling themes for centuries, becuase many themes are of enduring interest and relevance. The point is, the messages are worthwhile and deserving of consideration. They are simple, but I think that simplicity is itself one of the central themes of the book: that life is not that complicated when one follows one’s dreams honestly and passionately, or as the book says, “with love and purpose.” And yet the book reminds us that it is very easy to give up dreams and abandon one’s passion.

I have to disagree with one often-mentioned criticism of the book, namely, that it advocates pure materialism. That is, in my opinion, a serious misinterpretation. The book is written in the style of a fable, and therefore the goals people strive for are the typical gold-and-buried-treasure stuff. But I think one would have to misread the book quite severely to think that it is advocating material gain. The book is not at all about the specific goals that the protagonist pursues. It is about the importance of wanting something urgently and how the wanting seems to reorient the universe in harmony with that goal (just as a magnetic field can reorder the particles around it), how genuine passion and enthusiasm are rewarded with success, how those who love us encourage us to pursue our goals, and how the act of reaching for goals – whatever they are, and whether or not ultimately reached – plunges us into a strong current that carries us to places that we can never expect or know when we embark. There is something here in common with the beliefs of the Romantics, in that much of the value of the goal is in the journey that it leads us on — the experiences gained and the lessons learned.

It’s not a fair criticism of the book, I think, to say that it doesn’t tell us what happens when people’s goals conflict with one another, or disclose that circumstances outside of our control often render us unable to reach our goals however sincerely we may pursue them. We don’t need a book to tell us that. Anyone who has made it out of childhood knows that, and I have to believe that the author is well aware of this as well. I suspect that through his simple tale, he is trying to provide some kind of argument against the kind of cynicism or fear that the world can sometimes instill in us, and encourage us to keep diving into that “strong current” to see where it takes us.

86 of 91 people found the following review helpful.
All the Universe can be observed in a single grain of sand
By Robert Anderson
I checked this book out from the library, but I’m going to buy a copy and re-read it at regular intervals.

I read it over the course of one day, thought “nice fable” & began reading another book as soon as I finished this one. But I found that the lessons contained in this simple story of a shepherd boy seeking treasure, won’t be dismissed so easily. They must have taken up residence in my subconscious and kicked up some dust, because my mind keeps returning to the lessons of the story to find new and more subtle insights having formed.

These are lessons that we all know in our hearts, but that we forget as we get wrapped up in the hustle and bustle of our material lives. Lessons about listening to our hearts and following our dreams. Lessons about living in the moment, the transient nature of possessions and the illusion that we can even “possess” something to begin with. Lessons about freeing ourselves from fear and about understanding our lives as part of the energy of the Universe and understanding that everything will work out the way it was intended to. Lessons about trusting in signs, knowing that our lives have a grand purpose and that the forces of the Universe will conspire to help us fulfill that purpose. And the lesson that all of the fortunes and misfortunes we encounter in life are part of our spiritual education, and that it’s not the earthly “treasure” we seek that’s important but the lessons learned while in pursuit of it.

If you like to ponder the meaning of life, then let your mind and spirit mull over the lessons in this book. It’s a quick and enjoyable read that will provide some new insights, or remind you of some old one’s that you’ve forgotten.

213 of 237 people found the following review helpful.
A Powerful Parable
By Kevin Joseph
More parable than novel, “The Alchemist” uses the story of young shepherd Santiago’s search for his Personal Legend as an allegory for everyman’s struggle to break from the comfortable confines of conformity and pursue his life dreams. Along the way, of course, our young everyman is beset by all manner of setbacks, testing his resolve and forcing him to become attuned to the Soul of the World in order to survive. By paying attention to the details in the world around him, which serve as omens guiding him towards his goal, young Santiago becomes an alchemist in his own right, spinning unfavorable circumstances into riches.

Aside from the ubiquitous theme about the power of perseverance, my favorite part of the book was its glorification of simplicity. Like the pared-down manner in which the story is presented, Santiago’s rare ability to get in touch with the Soul of the World comes not from the procedures described in arcane tomes pursued by traditional alchemists, but rather from a simple honesty and observance of the workings of the world. While the lack of character or plot complexity precludes this minimalist work from being considered a great novel, it will be a satisfying read for those seeking inspiration of the purest sort.

-Kevin Joseph, author of “The Champion Maker”

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