In this short story Hawthorne cleverly uses rhetorical devices such as satire, irony and foreshadowing. Satire is present at the end of the story. Alymer was so concerned about perfection to know that his wife really loved him. Many scientists make the mistake of trying to perfect something, when it cannot be perfected. The whole story seems to be ironic.
Man seeks to perfect things but instead kills it.
Foreshadowing is scattered all throughout the story. Alymer's wife is willing to make Alymer look at her normally. She ignores constant signs that something could go wrong. The flower that dies is probably the greatest foreshadowing, when she sees the book of experiments. She reads its contents but seemed to ignore the fact that something could go horrible wrong.