Class Log June 3, 2008

Hey everyone, it's Steph...

"For we are always what our situations hand us - it's either sadness or euphoria."
--billy joel (the piano man)

Today in class we talked about Hawthorne's 'The Birthmark'. The three main characters are Aylmer, Aminadab, and Georgiana, whose names will be frequently mispelled throughout the remainder of this post.
Aylmer represents a secular being, a man of science for the sake of man-made aesthetic appeal. He kept a log book of his failures. Aylmer married Georgina mainly for prestige and egotistic love for status, rather than love itself.
Mr. Laz quoted 'If you tell someone they are ugly enough times, they will eventually believe it', and sure enough Aylmer hates the birthmark that Georgiana has. this birthmark has a bunch of symbolism associated with it:
-the birthmark is the grounding for the character of Georgiana, and makes her (in a sense) tied to the earth, rendered natural
*Alymer tries to eliminate this, tries to make her man-made, unnatural,
transcended
-it is a tiny red-hued hand , as if touched by a fairy
*This represents a force of nature, a blessing bestowed upon her skin,
and Alymer wants to remove this, to again de-naturalize her

This story is clearly Romantic. In a similar work, Frankenstein, Shelley advocates the point that humans should not try to play God and bring about life, because by man-made creation comes destruction. Well, here Aylmer seems to view himself as a divine power, as God, and thus decides that science eradicates the need for God ('if ya got a test tube you're all set...').
The only character I haven't really mentioned is aminadab, who represents the natural man, with his unkempt appearance and shaggy hair. He seems to really be in tune with the earth. He is but a peasant, a worker, a man-of-the-land, someone real, humanesque... He himself says that if Georgina were his wife, he would not bother with the birthmark.

Perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of this story is that it correlates directly to today's society and is hence applicable. The overwhelming need for people to perfect their physical forms, to create something aesthetically pleasing and societally accpetable, is extremely prevalent in the modern world. Also, trying to look better externally may also influence an internal make-over. Are we more internally comfortable when we are externally satisfied?
We briefly touched on 'nature vs. nuture' and how both genetics AND environmental factors come into play when it comes to societal acceptance.
We discussed giving into physical alteration versus being content with yourself as you are and repressing the urge to change external appearances.
Ian's comments about key celeb plastic surgery jobs were quite excellent.


******************Assignment: Read rappaccini's daughter (hawthorne) and be ready for discussion.***********************************************************