FRANKENSTEIN lolz

Easton Wilkins

Prof. Meehan

Literature and Composition

February 24, 2010

Frankenstein; A Behemoth in Paradise

The complications invested within the matter of Victor Frankenstein and his Monster leave a great deal to be discussed at the conclusion of Mary Shelley’s gothic wonder. Shelley’s inclusion of various historic counts of literature infuse the novel with rich, complex thoughts of alchemy, philosophy, and to a certain extent religion just to name a few. The idea of Victor generating a specimen all of his own creation, defining science, exceeding the ideas of physical contents and the nature of creation is completely intuitive; all of which relate back to the inclusions of Milton’s Paradise Lost. The introductory passage so reads; “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?—“ Paradise Lost [X. 743-5] This quote, I believe, embodies the spirit  of the Monster and clearly bridges his literary brotherhood to Satan; in his isolated manner of existence and essential fall from grace (birth to terror and murder, etc.).

The horror of Frankenstein does not necessarily come at the popular moment of climax in which the molding of the creature is animated, but instead it spreads most intelligently throughout the entire story. The melancholic nature of Mary Shelley’s delivery reverberates the intense altercations between the Monster and Victor, notably in the scene where the monster discusses his reading; “. . .but I was wretched, helpless, and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition; for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me.” (117) This relation to Milton’s work directly illuminates some of the complications within the Monster’s conceptual being, and shows further problems regarding the dynamic of the concepts of evil, malice, and further daemon relatives. Satan’s bitter, envious character is the poison apple to the previous Snow White world of Adam and Eve, and the monster of Frankenstein exudes almost mirrored qualities based on his brief and unfortunate experiences in the world in which he was born into.

The central figure in time that perpetuates the drawn out tragedy of the monster is absolutely his initial contact with the world and thusly the first impression he has upon Victor. It so reads; “Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath. . .his shriveled complexion and straight black lips.”(60) This rejection almost plays as a lucid remake of Satan’s fall from grace, where the monster’s only innocence is his birth, which is quickly swept away by the frightful flare of his creator; sending him into chaotic despair and a fall from a naïve steeple. Satan’s displacement acts as a catalyst for his interference with the free will of mankind and treacherous undertakings in the Garden of Eden. The monster echo’s these actions by mercilessly tearing down Victor’s mental fabric by killing the most beloved ones that surround his life.

Milton’s inklings of Genesis converge most vividly with Shelley’s gothic world and exposition of human torment; adhering to the traditions of villainy and creation, life and death, birth and rebirth. As Satan transforms the view of man, so the monster transforms his peripheral landscape; ultimately, melting his perceptive equilibrium and falsified hopes of greatness that Victor once possessed. The snake and the giant, respectively, have succeeded in nullifying certain dreams of existence, and by their own destruction created their own unique prisms in the glimmer of understanding.

“I pledge to have abided by the Washington College Honor Code.”

You’ve Gone Too Long Without Sleep.

While the stereotype  of Frankenstein lies in a night shrouded in lightning, mad science, and a climactic birth of unexplainable terror, the novel remains remarkably different in its presentation of a central terrifying part; one that may be nonexistent and instead scattered throughout the masterpiece. A moment of immense fright and horror comes in Chapter 20 when the monster returns to the scene of his own crime; “. . .by the light of the moon, the daemon at the casement. A ghastly grim wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where I sat fulfilling the task which he had alloted to me.” (145) In this instance, Shelley’s masterful craft of the genre is exposed vividly; capturing the reader in this moment of heavy tension and forcing a picture of the monsters indescribable figure into their minds. The true malice of the creature is shown but at the same time, the acts upon which he now prides himself are only beacons of helplessness and confusion; a spiteful taste of the world and its levels of evil and correction. I believe it may relate back to Paradise Lost again in this way; in that the monsters actions could arguably be out of ignorance and fright, much like those of Adam and Eve in Milton’s classic. The tragic elements of Frankenstein swallow up all of the characters from Victor to the monster, Henry, Elizabeth, and many others; all of which contribute to the tragedy itself which ultimately, is Victors fall from grace. Shelley’s brilliant rhetoric conveys to us the magic of her story, and the hell it possesses.

Frankenstein, sadly, without Gene Wilder.

The magnitude of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the literary world and its counterparts is most undeniably great, considering its epistolary fashion and experimentive nature of occult phonomena that are the ligaments to the novels skeleton. Having previously read the novel, it is most interesting reading it again and seeing new interpretations of thematics and other such contents that make this novel such a mark on the literary timeline of the Western world. One of the first things noticed in the opening letters (Letter IV gives wonderful example) is the similarities in frailty between Dr. Frankenstein and Captain Robert Walton and how through their trials it is shifted to more of a sense of despair but recognized growth, given what their time together entails. “You may conceive my astonishment on hearing such a question addressed to me from a man on the brink of destruction. . .we were on a voyage of discovery towards the northern pole.” (35) While these lines seem resonably crafted, I detect an almost acute sense of sensetivity and perhaps femenine traits that Victor also shows signs of later on. An example; “Oh, save me! save me! I imagined that the monster seized me; I struggled furiously, and fell down in a fit.” (64) This flamboyance is without a doubt partially drawn from parts of Victors past, present, and the seclusion of himself from the outside world with the construction of his now animte being. An almost self-destructive account of scientific brilliance leads him to multiple illnesses, fears, and paranoid acts of outlandish manners; those of which he can not help but be susceptible to.

Writing Project #1

Easton Wilkins

Prof. Meehan

Literature and Composition

February 4, 2010

Birkerts, You May Come Out of Your Cave Now

When thinking of reading as an activity, most minds would jump to someone delving into a novel or flipping through a book, but this is not always the case. Reading can come in many forms and acquired through many different mediums. Sven Birkerts would of course disagree, but through my own childhood experiences with reading I have come to believe that reading is not an activity that revolves around books and parchment exclusively, but instead is done through many methods, making it more accessible.

As a youngster, I read whatever I wanted. When I say read of course, I mean that I utilized books, papers, the Internet, and anything else I could get my hands on to quench my thirst for words and their meaning. A fond memory is of me being home schooled and reading every possible article on my computer’s Britannica Encyclopedia; absolutely anything that caught my eye. I would ponder the workings of science, fish, ancient civilizations, and so on; the possibilities were endless. And the beauty of this is that although I didn’t own an entire shelf of the Britannica’s I was reading, I was clearly able to obtain and read the same things that I could find in their physical clones, even more so because it was an online Britannica. This was perhaps my first real exposure to the possibilities of other sectors of medium and has since propelled my curiosity of the potential of reading, ways of reading, and my relation to the subject.

Birkerts eyes seem to have been created to be inclined to only view parchment, because his stubborn hold on books cannot see the advancing of information and its accessibility; primarily lying in computers in our present day state. While books have run a great course since Gutenberg and continue to do so, even books replaced other forms of reading and the dispersing of information and the evolutionary trend is following. While I do admire Birkerts tenacious grasp on his beloved volumes of leaves, realizations must be made in order to exact the truth of the matter; and that is books sharing the spotlight with technological mediums until one day when they will lose their timelessness that Birkerts has gone ahead and granted them. His sense of denial is what I believe stunts his argument; while he exacts in strong, mild mannered ways his love and attachment to his building blocks of upbringing, he fails to acknowledge the power and magnitude of the subjects he wishes to dismiss from our dimension. “Where the electronic impulse rules, and where the psyche is conditioned to work with data, the experience of deep time is impossible.” (76) I find this hard to agree with, considering the only difference between pausing on something being read from a page and something from a screen is the material essence that makes up those objects; and this would allow for deep time, resonance, and wisdom to be equally present in both arenas.

Earlier on in The Gutenberg Elegies Berkerts presents another astounding generalization that can too be related to fields of electronics and such; “A world inside the world, secret and concealable. A world that I could carry about as a private resonance, a daydream, even when I was not reading. A moveable feast.” (35) Besides citing Hemingway’s novel A Moveable Feast (which sort of upsets me), Birkerts also allows me to prove a point through him; he speaks of “a world within a world” and the first thought it brings to my mind is technology. Technology is regarded as the driving force in the advancement in our society and people absolutely treat it as such; using e-mail, text messages, online books, anything they can get their hands on to simplify the mechanics of our environment. My upbringing has taught me to embrace this and I do so, and thusly believe that books are not the only worlds within ours.

It is by stepping out of the world of books and acknowledging the emergence of others (technologies) as aforementioned that will steer Birkerts underlying vagabond to a safe haven of contentment and understanding on the matter of our future regarding reading, knowledge, and the like. As the world turns, life will turn with it; over and over again until one day we may find a timeless article that will allow us to grow exponentially and perfectly so that books, computers, and such will no longer be of use. An H.G. Wells type of world perhaps, perhaps not; regardless, the light of that day surely will not blind my eye.

Works Cited

Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies. NY: New York, 2006. Print

“I pledge to have abided by the Washington College Honor Code.”

Times They Are a Changin

“The Paper Chase” is a most enticing name for a chapter, but what seemed to be an interesting segway through Birkerts’ methodical, picky, and uninteresting propoganda of an undefined “lost world” and “lost way” of literature and its becoming in our lives only turned out to be a queasy life story that somehow merits the exclusion of technology in the spectrum of literature. “I listened to Bob Dylan and the Kinks, kept my ear glued to Detroit’s new FM stations. . .” (pg.43) and there is a break in Birkert’s chastice-like persona of reading! Here we find him slaving beneath technology, beckoning for new radio stations and mind controlling digitalization of sound, soon to take over the world, just as Birkert;s feels today! But really, to undermine the institution of technology, hypertext etc. when you yourself have participated in such things is moderately foolish, especially when the basis of your (Birkert’s) arguement is that digitalization is robbing reading and literature and text of its classic, timeless like persona and pulling it into a new world of pixelated cobwebs, that are sure to propel the activity of reading and give it new possibilities as far as reaching out to people. After all, the world will continue to turn and “the times they are a changin’” (Bob Dylan? ironic) constantly and will continue forthwith tenacity and bearing consultation of noone except for those developing and advancing.

Chapter 1 – Gutenberg

Tradition, history, and many other niches of information have before present day, been acquired and passed along in vastly different ways than our roaring society now participates in. Whether it be print, spoken word, or even some encodings on rock walls, history itself lives within writing, and thusly writing (as a term of works, not pens, pencils, etc.) perpetuates the inclusion of itself within history; and spans through linear time. And with time comes advancement, comes change, comes adjustment; from wall to paper, songs to speech, we now come to the most daunting of mediums, one onset by our precious power boxes of doom. These of course are computers (as we call them) and they are a key focal point of our societies’ entering into digitalization and electronic dependence; a new element of the world. In fact, this blog (if I sided with Birkerts) would be a complete contradiction of his meticulous argument and throw gas on his fire that burns for the “old world” of parchment texts and quills, long scroll and books with paper matter, with so much importance and grasp. A side to choose on the matter is quite difficult; while books are seen as a classic ideal of reading because of their legitimate connections and exposition and manipulation of writing, technology isjust like reading texts in that it is a link in the chain of the history of language and now instead of going from a cave wall (for example) to a piece of parchment, we see paper evolve to screen. This “natural” transgression frightens Birkerts, but I believe he fails to see the way in which different mediums may in some ways scratch each others backs.