Book Comparison

Book Comparison

Introduction

Nathaniel Hawthorne's “The Birth Mark” and Graham Greene's “The Destructors” are two short stories that focus two different aspects of life. Hawthorne wrote The Birth Mark in 1843, which is a short love story that revolves around two main characters - Georgiana, a beautiful lady with a birth mark on her cheeks and her husband Aylmer (Hawthorne, 1983). This story discusses the psychological aspects of sexual relations between the main characters. Hawthorne also highlights the issue of perfectionism in human being as Aylmer dose not find her wife attractive just because of the birth mark on her face (Dunne, 2007).

Greene's The Destructors, on the other hand, discusses the destructive elements in human nature. This story is based on a group of teenagers who made their own gang - Wormsley Common Gang - on the name of their residential area. The story reflects the situation of London after bombardment by Hitler in World War II (Greene, 1989). This paper provides comparison of two above mentioned books focusing on different aspect of life.

Discussion

The Birth Mark

The theme of the book “The Birth Mark” is based on romance and outer beauty. Outer beauty means, the physical beauty. It also revolves around, the selfishness of the husband and faithfulness of his wife. In this story, Georgiana is a beautiful woman but with a red birth mark on her cheek. Though a lot of men find it very attractive, still her husband did not like it and considered it as imperfection in beauty (Dunne, 2007). As the theme, of the story has faith in it, the role of the wife is very faithful. She wants to make her husband happy, that was the reason she agreed on the plastic surgery. Though this surgery was not safe, and her husband knew it, he still went for it and it leads to the loss of life. The Birth Mark has all the moments, from romance to betraying. Aylmer; the husband, was so selfish that he killed his wife through a surgery just for his happiness and arrogance. This story teaches the lesson that one should not always go after physical beauty. Internal and utter goodness are the best thing in one's nature (Dunne, 2007). Hence, one should learn how to love individuals because of their nature and should not go for physical beauty of people. If one will do that, it might reach a bad ending. To ...