Satire And Irony In The Birthmark By Nathaniel Hawthorne

Satire/Irony used by American writers
Irony and satire are literature devices that are used by many American writers. Irony is a term where a narrator of a poem or short story/novel makes us think between the relationship of what might happen throughout the story while we read, to what really happens at the end. Irony is usually another term for being sarcastic, it is the opposite of what we really mean. There are many stories and poems that use irony to narrate them. The birthmark is a short story written in the late centuries, by Hawthorne, Nathaniel. This story uses many irony techniques throughout the story to describe it. We will mostly be focusing on the irony used in the birthmark. The birthmark was a short story where a scientist named …show more content…
To them they thought it had some supernatural powers, and Georgiana should admire it and should not lose it. For example, “… left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give her suck sway over all hearts…” [Nathaniel]. In this quote, the folks were trying to tell her that the birthmark was a token of magic and she should keep it. As we can see the irony here, the folks were thinking the opposite of what Alymer and his wife were thinking, they were being ironic that the birthmark was magical and had some magical powers, and not wanting Georgiana to get rid of it. As we all know that a birthmark cannot have any supernatural powers and the folks in this novel are just being sarcastic, and thinking that Georgiana is lucky that she has this birthmark on her cheek, as the fairies have placed their hand on her cheek, which left the …show more content…
Aminadab was Aylmer’s assistant, and he knew way more than Aylmer, but since Aminadab was his assistant Aylmer should’ve known more than Aminadab. This is considered as ironic because all Aylmer wanted to do was make her perfect by removing the birthmark, but Aminadab insisted that his wife was perfect the way she is, he didn’t need to remove her birthmark. Even though Aminadab was less intelligent than Aylmer, he could differentiate between the right and bad. As he did tell Aylmer that you cannot change what nature creates for us. Meaning he was trying to tell Alymer that his wife was already perfect the way she was, and didn’t need to change her, but clearly, he never understood that, since all he wanted to do was make her perfect by removing the