Frankenstein: The End

The Hero Machine

I decided that the hero in this novel is Alphonse Frankenstein, Victor's father. Though he does nothing overly heroic, he is one of the only characters who seems to genuinly care about someone other than himself. He is much less selfish than Victor. His proiorities seem to be centered much more on others and family than on reaching his own goals and discovery. He tries to pull Victor out of his depression and it is obvious he wishes for the best for his son.

Class Notes: The End of the Novel

In the end is Victor the monster? I believe that the two characters could definitely be the same person. After the class discussion and the remainder of the novel, it seems likely they are the same.

Class Notes: 2/27/2009

Victor agrees to make the monster a mate. Once he begins to put together the monster, Victor starts having second thoughts. He decides to stop the projects and as a result, the monster kills Henry. The monster threatens to kill another one of his loved ones but Victor interprets this as being killed himself. He is so caught up in his own ego that it makes it difficult for Victor to foresee the monster killing another one of his family members. The monster purposely kills Victor's loved ones because it is the most painful thing possible.

Are Victor and the monster one and the same person?
Does anyone besides Walton actually see the monster?
Why would Victor want his family members to die? It is possible he is getting rid of these people in order to not get too close to him. Victor seems to be taking his time in marrying Elizabeth.

Frankenstein Online: Word search "wretch" 13 occurrences

In Chapter 5, volume 2, Victor identifies with the monster by calling himself a wretch as he admits to killing his three family members.
Throughout the novel, Victor switches back and forth between calling himself a wretch and calling the monster a wretch. In the beginning of the novel, Victor is the dominant one and the monster plays the role of the slave. Towards the end their roles are switched. This explains why Victor's begins to see himself as the wretch.

Is there any reason why a person would want to be alone in the world? Does he worry that others will hurt him?

Class Notes: 2/25/2009

Shelley compares the monster Victor creates to the novel itself. Once a person has an experience with one particular food or type of person they may let their opinions carry forward on to others.

At one time there was a notion that children could teach themselves. By letting children determine their own beliefs without being influenced by others, they will be better people. This did not work. Is our generation corrupt?

How does the monster represent the idea of raising children properly? Firstly, Victor does not even stick around long enough to raise him at all. Though the monster does not know right from wrong, he still choices to make some of the right decisions. Basically, the monster is a child.

Do parents push their children to do things that reflect on their job as parents? Are they made to prove something? Why does the monster try and hurt Victor by killing William? His initial desire is not to kill him but to make him a friend. The monster shows that he is resentful towards Victor for abandoning him. Does your maker owe you happiness? Victor owes him the very basics to help him grown into the being he wants to be.

The Tale of a Monster

The monster's tale makes me feel sad for him as well as mad towards Victor. Reading about how the monster felt abandoned and was left to learn all things about human life and language on his own seemed like a story of lonely perseverance. Not only does his story show how intelligent and gifted he is, it gives him a sense of character. It is a sad story because even though he is in this case considered a monster, to me he is much more humanlike than not. His life means just as much as any other life created by another human being. He has the same parts and the same mental capacity which makes him seem like a depressed and lonely child. These descriptions are typically only used to describe people; this leads me to once again see him as more of a human than a monster.

Apart from the sympathy I feel towards the monster, I feel even more angry with Victor than I had in the beginning of the novel. I feel that it would be the equivalent to a women wanting a child and hoping to finally get pregnant and then choosing to abandon the child once it is born. The monster was not an unexpected mistake and he was not forced upon Victor by someone else. Victor chose to make this life and just like parents choosing to have a child, should have to take responsibility for it. The monster's story adds an angle to the novel and at this point, I would take the monster's side over Victor's for more than one reason!

Class Notes: 2/23/2009

Why is there the desire to die before your children? Loving children on the deepest level can be scary. Some use the excuse of not wanting to get hurt to not have children. 

"Prometheus Un-Bound". Victor is the modern Prometheus who gave fire to the people on earth. 

"Rime of the Ancient Mariner" Man feels guilty for killing beautiful men and lives on with slimy snakes. At first, the snakes look ugly but then he sees their beauty. Why would you kill someone you love? Unconditional love is scary. This could be the reason some resist love and affection. 

Frankenstein: Pg 247 Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude. 

Man dreams of his soul mate. He wakes up in the middle and disappointed, he travels to find her. He does not realize that she is real and has done everything for him. He could have avoided her because she was a real person and he may have been scared. His characters resemble Victor and Walton. 

While creating the monster, Victor loses touch with his friends and family. He does this in part because he is obsessed with the creation. What feelings caused him to neglect nature and his relationships. Is Victor's attempt to create this life a way of escaping Elizabeth or making a technique that works to preserve her? 

"I became as cheerful as before I was attacked by the fatal passion." v. "I became as cheerful as before I indulged in my egotistical dream to create life." How does this apply to the death of Justine? Should he have tried to prove that the monster exists? Victor believes that he suffers more than anyone. In reality, the author admits that Elizabeth and Justine are really suffering a lot if not more than Victor. He chooses to ignore their pain and is selfish in recognizing his own pain and sorrow. 

Victor & Walton: More alike than not.

I see Walton as being very much like Victor. Even though the two men have different passions and ambitions, they go about satisfying them in a similar ways. Both seem to feel passionate about something to the point of being obsessed with it. Victor's obsession with creating the monster and Walton's obsession with adventure both drive the men closer to danger. They take their commitment to what they enjoy to an unhealthy level that begins to effect others. Also, though their goals may at first seem to be opposite, they are even more similar than the characters themselves. As a character, Victor is constantly driven by the idea of discovering new territory on a scientific level. He feeds off of knowledge and pursues creating the monster in order to prove his abilities. Walton, on the other hand, also strives for knowledge just not that of science. His goal is to discover unknown places. These two objectives are much more alike than they are different.

Overall, it seems that both men are struggling to find something. Their desire to discover the unknown could prove to be detrimental to their own lives and the lives of others. From the reader's standpoint, it seems as though Victor could be serving as an example for Walton. Hopefully after listening to his story, Walton will rethink his own ambitions.

Class Notes: 2/20/2009

Walton is ambitious but spends a total of one year working towards his goal of being a famous writer. Pg 36.

Walton - Poet / Discoverer

Victor - Scientist

In Mary Shelley's eyes, these people are all artists wanting to be great. What is wrong with their attitudes? Why are people driven to do these types of things? The novel itself is an analysis of Victor. In the 1831 edition, Shelley gave more of an emphasis on Victor's obsession with secrets, he believes that he was fated. He wants to believe that he was fated but in reality, he was not. The belief of the character is different from the belief of the author.

Victor's childhood was full of wonderful things. Loving parents, friends, school. He believes himself to have also been a creature to have been formed. Victor admits that his parents were loving and tender.

The process of Victor making his creation was destructive to his own health. He was obsessive and disregarded any kind of potential negative outcome. In some ways, pregnancy is much like this - the exception would be that women are giving to get in the end. Victor knows that he will get something, hopefully something great, at the end of his project. As soon as the process was over, he was no longer productive in any way. His desire to aspire as a scientist ruins his life in many ways. Pg 34: "...many happy and and excellent natures would owe their being to me." Victor plays the God role throughout his process of creating this being. He wants to be worshipped.

Class Notes: 2/18/2009

Wuthering Heights: The End
Linton is sick and weakly, the opposite of Hareton. Young Catherine is similar to her mother; she is very selfish. It is interesting to see the second generation seem so similar to the first.

How could Emily Bronte create such dark creatures? The writer is animated and inspired by something they cannot control. Wuthering Heights is great art.

How does being famous change a person's life and relationships? People may warship a famous person and become in complete control of their actions.

Frankenstein By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Walton is trying to find a passage to the North Pole. Him and his shipmates spot Victor and bring him aboard the ship. "Unhappy man! Do you share my madness?" Quote found in 1819 edition, taken out of the 1831 edition. *Read both introductions - (Percy Shelley is a great poet). Some claim that Percy actually wrote Frankenstein which could be interpreted as sexism.

Walton wants to be a famous writer.

Class Notes: 2/16/2009

Articles and Movies that Influence Our Views

Classmates who read scholarly articles also noticed the different types of love shared by Catherine and Edgar v. Catherine and Heathcliff. This leads us to believe that Heathcliff and Catherine could be soul mates that may not belong together due to social reasons ect.

Another scholarly article read regards Healthcliff's cannibalistic nature. He is constantly tearing through characters in the novel. Example: knives and forks brought out but no food.

Will scholarly articles help to keep this type of literature alive?
Really intelligent people, looking/speaking down to others including their students. Dark sarcasm in the classroom: not working. Text curtain. Scholars tend to use words that cannot be interpreted by the average person/student. When long words are taken out are they really saying anything? Text curtains peel apart scholarly articles until they are comprehensible and the content within makes a difference in some way to the world.

Wuthering Heights: the 1992 movie version
The same character was used for Catherine as well as Catherine's daughter.

Turn to the scene where Catherine is on her death bed having her last conversation with Heathcliff. He blames her for choosing Linton over himself. He is angry at her and tells her she has killed herself. She claims that he left her as well.

Why would Emily Bronte want to darken romance? Maybe she wanted to represent a more realistic picture of love? Is it possible to love two people equally but differently? Would you choose your soul mate over the person you fit best with socially? Catherine cannot be blamed for loving two separate people differently.

*updated syllabus on Blackboard

Wuthering Heights: The Movie

After reading the novel, I was able to watch Wuthering Heights the movie. The version I found to be most helpful was the one filmed in 1992. The scene I chose to write about was the when in which Heathcliff goes to see Catherine's body soon after she dies. Though this may not have been one of the longest or most important scenes in the novel, it was the one that caught my attention while watching the movie. I felt that it differed significantly from that in the novel but it also gave me a new perspective on what I perceived to be Heathcliff and Catherine's relationship. After viewing the scene, I was able to understand it in a completely different way.

Throughout the novel, I found very little evidence relating to the true chemistry assumed to be shared between Heathcliff and Catherine. I think the reader assumes automatically that Heathcliff's love for Catherine is intense. Unfortunately, the actions to convey this are typically negative, vengeful acts. I interpreted Heathcliff marrying Isabella as him seeking revenge on Catherine for marrying Edgar. His mistreatment of his new wife was revenge against Edgar for Catherine getting sick. It was through these methods that Heathcliff's love for Catherine is assumed. The scene where Heathcliff visits Catherine's body is somewhat the opposite. It was the first time since early in the novel that I noticed Heathcliff show real emotion. His sadness in this scene was overwhelming to me.

For some reason, while reading the novel itself, it was truly difficult for me to feel for Heathcliff and believe that his love for this women was genuine. The most convincing part of the novel for me was the description of their relationship as children. To be honest, I did not really believe the two of them could be soulmates. This one scene in the movie was enough to make me change my mind. The scene itself begins with Edgar placing the locket into Catherine's hand as she lies in a plain wooden coffin. He then gives her a sad look and leaves the room. Almost immediately Heathcliff breaks into the room and quickly approaches Catherine. He rips off her veil and the flowers surrounding her and grabs her entire body out of the coffin. He hugs her passionately and cries.

Part of the reason this scene had such a huge impact on me was because it clearly shows the difference between the love Edgar has for Catherine and the love Heathcliff has for her. Edgar's face looked sad but he was accepting of her death. Heathcliff on the other hand looked distraught. By hugging her corpse, it is clear that he loves her on a whole different level. To actually see the sadness on his face made the scene more emotion for me. The reaction I felt was different from when I had originally read the scene in the novel.

Though I believe there are many instances where directors make changes to the original stories in order to make them more appealing to audiences, in this case it was helpful. Throughout the novel I felt anger towards Heathcliff as well as Catherine for some of her actions. It was not until I watched the movie did I consider the story of Wuthering Heights to be one of the greatest love stories of all time. In our class discussion, I was baffled by the comment made that this story could be thought of as one of the best. Once I watched the movie, and faces were put to names, I began to see how truly heartbreaking and wonderful this story really is. It made a difference to me and changed the way I interpreted some of the characters' actions. This scene at Catherine's coffin helped me to realize that this is a story about heartbreak and misery. The characters, no matter how hard they try, are caught in lives they despise. The rules of the time combined with Heathcliff's vengeful acts against others create a sad and confusing atmosphere. This atmosphere became less confusing but even more sad when translated into movie form. Through watching the film I was able to not only gain a new understanding of the scenes, I was able to gain a new appreciation for the story all together.

Wuthering Heights: Class Notes 2/9/09

Assignment for the week: 

What does ______ do that helps people better understand scene _______? 

Wednesday & Friday: movie version of Wuthering Heights shown during class - write five paragraphs answering the question above. Focus on the role the media plays in our understanding of the novel. Due Monday. 

Heathcliff tries to make Catherine jealous of his relationship with Isabella. In a sense he is taking revenge on Edgar for taking Catherine away from him. These actions all contribute towards Heathcliff's misery. Heathcliff also blames Hindley for losing Catherine. Hindley was the person who originally degrades Heathcliff. 

Up through this point in the novel, Healthcliff has continuously made a point to seek revenge on every person who has wronged him at one point or another. His entire marriage to Isabella was an act to get back at Edgar. The only person he does not truly want to hurt is Catherine. At first it seemed as though he was getting married just to make her jealous. 

Catherine eventually dies due to childbirth. Her mental state declines slowly. She was forbade from seeing Heathcliff by Edgar and left to spend a lot of time on her own. 

Wuthering Heights: Heathcliff

Analysis of Main Character: Heathcliff

In my past experiences reading Wuthering Heights, Healthcliff has always caught my attention as being the most interesting character in the novel. This time around, the same is true. His love for Catherine makes him seem to be very caring and loving but he shows no real signs of being the good guy overall. Throughout the first ten chapters, the reader feels sorry for him for being mistreated by his newly found family. I caught myself hoping that Heathcliff and Catherine would rekindle their childhood love. I cannot imagine how it must have felt for him to overhear Catherine telling Nelly that she would never be able to marry him and instead is planning to marry someone else. I picture him as being big and strong, the typical hero, who will save Catherine and the other servants from Hindley.

Class Notes: 2/4/09

Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights, was at one point labeled as The Female Shakespeare. 

The atmosphere of the first couple chapters is dark. Mr. Lockwood falls in love with Catherine and at first she likes him back. She then assumes that the feelings are not going to be returned. At this point she turns away and changes her mind. 

Holly Madison has had multiple, painful surgeries that have transformed her and forced her to take an excessive amount of pain killers. Another example of this would be the opening scene of Pretty Women when Julia Roberts' legs are replaced with someone else's. 

Class Notes: When does an online life become real life?

*See two posts below for original assignment.

The more people become emotionally invested in these online worlds, the more dangerous they become.

Rape in Cyberspace: There are some things that are the same.

The psychological side of rape can be very similar in the case of online rape. This mental aspect is often times the most long lasting of all.

There is definitely a major emotional investment on the part of the people controlling their online avatars: they should try and make the distinction between "I was raped" and "My online character was raped". When does this become real life?

A Clockwork Orange: A traumatizing example.