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Sometimes we dream of being perfect people who have perfect beauty. We were born to pursue perfect beauty. In other words, the pursuit of beauty is one of the instincts of human beings. Through history it has been frequently used as the subject matter of literary works that reflect instincts and desires of human kind. In three literary works, ˇ°The Birthmarkˇ± by Nathaniel Hawthorne, ˇ°Recipeˇ± by Janice Mirikitani, and ˇ°Love Poemˇ± by John Frederick Nims, we can find the theme of the pursuit of beauty and perfection. The first work that I chose, ˇ°The Birthmarkˇ±, embodies most clearly the instinctive pursuit of perfect beauty of the three works. This fiction shows how a man can become obsessive to the desire to achieve perfect beauty and what the result is. Stated earlier, the desired to be perfect without a single flaw is one of basic hopes of mortal human beings regardless of when or where they live. Therefore, we can say the main subject of this fiction is related to archetypes, the term which Carl Gustav Jung first introduced to explain the collective fears and hopes underlying in our mind. Georgiana is described as an almost perfect woman except for a birthmark on her cheek, and the main conflict starts with the dream of her husband, Aymer. In this work, the author uses dream vision to show us how his desire was strong.
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