A. Trust is like a mirror; once it has been shattered, nothing ever looks quite the same.
B. In "Rappaccini's Daughter," Hawthorne portrays the effects of betrayal of trust in order to demonstrate that all in this world is untrustworthy and death is the only certainty as prescribed in penalty for man's betrayal of God.
C. Perhaps the deeper cause of the tragedy lies in fact that neither Giovanni nor Rappaccini love or trust Beatrice more than his ideology.
D. As she dies from the antidote, she charges Giovanni with her death saying, "Farewell, Giovanni. Thy words of hatred are like lead within my heart...Oh, was there from the first not more poison in thy nature than in mine?" (420)
E. So Giovanni, like Rappaccini, is betrayed by this illusive faith in an intellectual human construct.
F. This story goes beyond mere tragedy, however.
G. Rappaccini is confronted with his treachery by Beatrice in her dying moments when she asks,
H.
Still, wages of betrayal are more heinous than life.
I. She turns from the poison with which her father nourished and sustained her and accepts the antidote which Giovanni, her lover offers her.
J. (399)