Frankenstein: the creation

[alfprof212]

Could we define Victor as a godlike creator or a mother?  Or an inventor?  After reading the creation scene, could we think of it as similar to biblical creation or physical childbirth?  Could the monster be considered an invention rather than a creation?

[alfprof212]

Why does Victor initially hate his creation?

[chad]

An interesting point that the last group came upon was that Clerval was not present during the monster's creation. Would the monster have been created if Clerval attended the same university?

Chad

[chad]

The best passage to quote, and also a little controversial, would be from Shelley's introduction:

" I busied myself to think of a story, -- a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which
would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror -- one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name. I thought and pondered -- vainly. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative.

   Every thing must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindoos give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of the void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it."

Fitzgerald later takes the egg to new heights, but, to ask what Shelley believes: Do materials have to be "afforded?"

Chad

[chad]

So....... Victor's problem was, essentially, that the materials were something that already existed. That is, he used dead body parts. He could not create someting out of thin air--everything imagined had some semblance to something existent, and the final version of the monster truned out to be something resembling a human- something like Victor. 

By the way, the world is not so far removed from Victor;s problem. Can we fashion a new world order, or new societies,from words existent? Or will we, as a western world,  consisitently hit Rome, the root of modern language? Will our ultimate struggle be with the eastern half of the world, which has evolved a different language and culture, or will it provide a needed balance?

Chad

[chad]

Maybe the best point in the story, and in the latest movie, is when Victor comes face-to face with the monster. At this point, he demands a "friend", and I get the sense that the monster makes demands simply from being exposed to a langusge with words like "friend", in a harsh world, I might add, which does not fully understand its meaning either.  So,  in essence, he demands a friend, someone like himself, when no one like himself exists in the world- he is simply one-of-a kind, and Victor now must fashion a new "bride of Frankenstein." If the word  did not exist, no obligation need be fulfilled....

Chad 

[alfprof212]

Interesting points, chad!

[chad]

I believe Frankenstein's main themes to be based upon a universe of stable and free elements, how we depend on a balance between them, and, most importantly, how imbalances between stability and freedom can often lead to revolutions as powerful as a thunderstorms.

Chad  

Message Edited by chad on 04-20-2008 11:09 AM