Themes in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"

Frontpiece to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"
(1831)
By Theodor Von Holst
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Victor Frankenstein is a privileged, intelligent young man from Ingolstadt who is passionate about life and the mysteries of creation. Fueled by this passion, he creates a sentient being. The drawback of Victor’s creation is its visage; the creature is more hideous than any other living thing on Earth, and all who look upon it instinctually draw back in fear.

Loved by no one (especially not Victor), the creature flees to the woods of Germany. There, he becomes literate in both words and love. Though, when he approaches the humans whom he cares most about, they react with predictable horror upon seeing his hideous form. Abandonment and fear are the two constants in the creature’s life. Those two things shape the creature into a demon, one that wishes to visit agony upon his creator by murdering everyone Victor holds dear.

Major themes in this book include humanity’s ever-expanding reach in creating something greater than human. However, as Victor learns, once such a being is created, it cannot be undone as easily as it was put together. There are consequences to creating a creature with human parts, but lacking any other qualities of a human (emotions, sympathies, intelligence). Even when the creature acquires these other human traits, it doesn't make him human in the eyes of others (though he felt himself to be equal to humans).

Another theme in the book is man’s inability to accept that in which he does not understand. Immediately, those who behold the creature spot him as a demon, without even allowing him to speak or act. Even when the creature acts solicitously (replenishing food and firewood, saving a woman from drowning), his actions go unappreciated and are even met with brutal force. Of his personality forming the way it did, the creature says “I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with […] visions of […] goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet, even that enemy of God and man had friends […]. I am alone.” (Shelley, p. 124). In a large way, the creature's creator and the world around him are responsible in creating a humanoid monster. 

Shelley, Wollstonecraft, Mary. Frankenstein. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones, 1818. Print. 

Promising new author: Elizabeth Baxter

    

British author Elizabeth Baxter of the new short story collection Circle Spinner is worth taking note of. She has been writing since she was six years old, and Circle Spinner is her debut novel. She has two more novels coming out this summer: Summer Storm and Everwinter.

Synopsis for Circle Spinner: 
Circle Spinner and Other Tales by Elizabeth Baxter 
Five fantasy and science fiction stories that will sweep you to other worlds.


Circle Spinner
Edith longs for a quiet retirement. She longs for her cottage by the sea and the company of her dogs. But the world, it seems, hasn’t done with her yet. For Edith is a Circle Spinner, the only one who can save the city of Shine from the terrifying Pantheon. 6000 words


The Following Star
Angus walks the corridors of a starship with only his dog for company. He guards a precious cargo: a population of colonists searching for a new home. But when a sudden course change threatens the ship, Angus discovers that all is not as it seems. 6000 words


One of those Days 
Simon is a high-flyer. Good job. Nice apartment. It’s not his fault if his company is involved in shady dealings with the fairy realm is it? No, if he keeps his head down and mouth shut, Simon is sure everything will be okay. But the Prince of Fae and his motley band of followers have other ideas. They have Simon in mind for a very special mission. 7000 words

The Blessing of Silence
The game has been played for years uncounted. Sakara has watched players come and go and been powerless to save them. She is a slave. What difference could she possibly make? But when a new player suddenly enters the game, Sakara begins to realize that she holds within her the power to end the game forever. 6000 words

Fallen Angel
Matthew’s faith is unshakable. A soldier in the United Church, he has dedicated his life to hunting demons. But when his latest mission goes wrong he discovers a secret that will cast everything he believes into doubt. 6000 words

Reviews for Circle Spinner from Amazon: 
"This was the first book I got on my new kindle. I didn't want to go straight into a novel because I wasn't sure if I'd like reading off a screen so I went for something shorter first. It was a good move because I really enjoyed the collection and the kindle didn't hurt my eyes after all. My main problem with short stories is that you don't have enough time to get to know the characters but this wasn't an issue here. You get to know all the characters really well and I found myself rooting for them. I liked some stories better than others, and my favorite was probably The Following Star as I loved Dog. I think there's probably something for everyone in this"

"I enjoyed each of the stories as each provided me with a different emotion and sub-genre: danger, sadness, happiness, comedy and action. The titular story was a great start to the collection: great characters from tired Edith to the evil demon Tenoquitil. I loved the relationship between Angus and dog in the Following Star and really enjoyed the humour in One of Those Days. As I intimated before, the collection provides something for different readers. Summer Storm, although of the fantasy genre (as apposed to sci-fi) proved to be an interesting introduction to what promises to be an exciting story. Overall, an easy to read and well written collection."


Baxter has a web blog that she uses to promote her writing, but the added wonder of her blog is that she also uses it to review and promote indie authors. Check out her blog here: http://elizabethbaxter.blogspot.com/

You can purchase Circle Spinner from this Amazon link, or find it via Baxter's webpage. Look for her on Goodreads as well!

Overview of Sci-Fi short Story, "The Machine Stops"

"The Machine Stops"
Source: TheMachineStopsFilm.wordpress.com

In this futuristic short story by E.M. Forster, humanity no longer resides on the surface of the Earth, but far below. The air above is unable to sustain life (or so everyone is led to believe). Human action, need, and desire are guided by the Machine: a super computer that caters to a person’s every wish. Need a hot bath? There’s a button for that. Need to give a lecture about Australian music? There’s a button for that.

Sameness is like a disease that has spread across civilization. Every room in every part of the underground Earth looks the same, everyone speaks the same language and feels the same sort of god-like worship for the Machine. The goal of the people is to eventually ‘be free from the taint of personality; live colorlessly’. Living underground requires certain characteristics, so those babies that are born with athletic traits are euthanized, as an athletic person would never be content with a life of solitary confinement. When people want to visit, they do so via cinamotrophes (3-D images of each other, like video chat). To see someone physically over a great distance, people travel by air-ships. The thought of touching one another or seeing daylight is abhorrent.

Vashti is a conformist, of the highest degree. However, her son, Kuno, has discovered that humanity has lost touch with each other, and with Nature. He visits the surface (without permission from the machine), and supposedly encounters others. Vashti is embarrassed that her son would go against the Machine, and both of them know that his actions will mean his eviction from his room underground (meaning, he will be forced to live above-ground, which will kill him).

Kuno does not care that he will be Homeless. He is passionate about what he experienced on the surface: “"Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives in the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It was robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it.”

After Kuno’s unscheduled visit to the Earth’s surface is made known to others, above-ground visits are made illegal. Another change is the re-instatement of religion (before it was thought to be perverse to be spiritual in any capacity). The religion that forms is based around the love of the Machine, and its all powerful knowledge and applications.

Themes in this story are plentiful. To begin with, man has lost touch with being an individual. The idea of conformity is one of comfort and pleasure. To be different is dangerous and unheard of. Another theme is man’s acquiescence to technology and the risks and rewards behind that. Technology in the story serves man’s every need so that the people begin to pray to it, considering it a divine being (though they acknowledge time and time again that it is a man-made structure). Is it right to worship something simply because it provides for you, even if it is clothing you, feeding you, keeping you safe? Do those conditions create the need for a spiritual connection?

There is an theme in the story that really resonated with me, and that is man’s ignorance to the past. People perpetuate traditions, habits, and cultural norms without knowing why (often without caring why. The narrator states “Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.”

Once the Machine stops, society breaks almost instantly. People are used to being taken care of, and they do not know how to exist without the thrum of the Machine, and all that it provides for them. As humans equally dependant on technology, I wonder how quietly (or loudly) we would fade after our Machines stopped. 

Terms in Narratology

 Chaucer as a pilgrim from
Ellesmere Manuscript, 
Early Edition of "The Canterbury Tales"
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Peter Barry describes the terms involved in the study of narratology. Narratology is comprised of many elements culminating in great storytelling, some of which both Dante and Chaucer use in The Miller’s Tale and Vita Nuova.

For example, Barry  writes about the use of time in a story. Every story has a beginning, middle, and end, but, as Barry puts it, “stories tend to begin in the middle,” (235). That is not to say that stories to not have flash-backs, or even fast-forwards, but to begin at the true beginning of a story can be (at times) boring. The literary term for flash-back is analeptic, with a flash-forward being proleptic. Geoffry Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale seems to begin in the middle; a drunken miller begins to tell the story of the jealous carpenter and his wife. The reader only knows this because the narrator sets up the backstory first, in analeptic fashion.

In the same way, the basic narrative mode of The Miller’s Tale is both diegetic and mimetic. Diegetic is when part of the story is summarized in a few sentences, while mimetic is the opposite. Mimetic storytelling is full of detail and conversation. The beginning of Vita Nuova is most certainly mimetic because of the detail in which the narrator describes the meeting of his love, Beatrice: “She appeared dressed in noblest colour, restrained and pure, in crimson, tied and adorned in the style that then suited her very tender age,” (Dante 5). Section 2 of Vita Nuova is proleptic because the narrator fast-forwards nine years later after meeting the girl of his dreams.

Works Cited

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. England: Manchester University Press. 2009. Print.

Alighier, Dante. Vita Nuova. 1295. Web.

An Analysis of Zora Neale Hurston's short story "Sweat"

Zora Neale Hurston-
American Author (1935)
By: Author unknown
Source: Wikimedia Commons

 Hurston's story "Sweat" depicts an abusive and selfish husband, Sykes. Delia, Sykes wife, has taken physical, emotional, and verbal abuse from Sykes for more than 15 years. Sykes treats his wife as a petulant teenager treats his mother: with little respect, but still expecting to be fully taken care of. Certainly, Sykes has some sort of mother-complex, even preferring big women to the skinny Delia. Though his mistress is described in an unflattering light ("a hunk uh liver wid hair on it"), it could be that Sykes finds bigger women attractive because he associates soft curves with a maternal figure.


Sykes is financially dependent upon his wife (since all he does with his own wages is gamble) and that makes him angry, angry enough to want to punish Delia, and even kill her. Though Delia's situation is not a happy one, it is not a rare one either. Any man is capable of the darkness found in Sykes. During the story, the other men in town describe the sort of man they believe Sykes to be: "There's plenty men dat takes a wife lak dey do a joint uh sugar-cane. It's round, juicy an' sweet when dey gits it. But dey squeeze an' grind, squeeze an' grind an' wring tell dey wring every drop uh pleasure dat's in 'em out. When dey's satisfied dat dey is wrung dry, dey treats 'em jes lak dey do a cane-chew. Dey throws em away." Many men, whether they are black, white, Asian or Hispanic, can treat women just as Sykes treats Delia.

All the same, Delia does seem somewhat stuck in her situation because of her race. The men in town gossip about Delia and Sykes, fully aware of how he has beat her for their entire marriage. Not one of the gossipers mentions aiding Delia, or calling the police on her behalf. The one thing that works as a temporary deterrent against Sykes is when Delia threatens to call "the white folks" on him. Would Delia have felt as helpless against an abusive husband had her character been white? I think so. Any woman who takes physical abuse for fifteen years might feel as though she had no other option but to take the abuse for the remainder of her marriage. However, this warrants repeating: Delia does seem somewhat stuck in her situation because of her race.

How Pound and Eliot Changed Modernist Poetry

 "Leathad na Cròice"
By Richard Webb (2006).
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Poems like "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly" and "The Wasteland" seem to embody the standard of Modernist poetry. Other Modernist poets like Moore, Millay, and Williams share the aesthetic element of Modernism, which is to allow each line of prose to fall naturally and playfully. However, the sensibility of most Modernist poetry hardly feels playful; poems by Pound and Eliot seem to share their dark perspectives of the world, their thoughts on existentialism, and other feelings through the use of their experiences and memories.

Eliot uses the first person perspective heavily in his poems, such as 'I have', 'I read', or 'I will show' in "The Wasteland". For example, these lines can be interpreted as a memory or experience of Eliot's because of the way they are presented to the reader:

"My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went."

"Ezra Pound"
By Alvin Langdon Coburn
(1913)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Though he does not use the same first person perspective as Eliot, Pound also seems to reflect on his own life in "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly" when he writes:

"For three years, out of key with his time,

He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start –"

By basing their poetry from their own thoughts and experiences, Eliot and Pound bring a cultural disparity to their work, as every human can bring their cultural baggage to the table, so to speak. Because of that disparity, the Modernist poems contain a sense of realism that is relatable on a much wider scope.

The Racial Implications of Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno"

"An Attack on a Galleon"
Artist: Howard Pyle (1905)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Herman Melville’s story Benito Cereno chronicles the American Captain Delano’s experience with the Spaniard cargo vessel, the San Dominick. Upon first boarding the vessel, Delano is surprised to see black slaves roaming the ship freely. He looks around for a captain, or any white man in authority, and he soon comes upon the Spaniard, Benito Cereno. Benito appears sickly, as his coughing fits continually interrupt his words. Constantly at Benito’s side is his black servant, Babo.

To Delano’s eyes, Babo is the perfect servant. He is sweet, loyal, and Delano says of Babo to Benito, “I envy you such a friend; slave I cannot call him,” (Melville 3). Though there is plenty of strange activity on the boat that puts Delano off his guard (slaves sharpening hatchets, a black child’s violence that goes unpunished after he strikes a Spanish boy and draws blood), Delano lets his good nature convince him that everything is orderly enough on the San Dominick. What Delano is unaware of is the mutiny aboard the ship; the Africans are in charge of the Spaniards, a thought that Delano seems too naïve to comprehend. The mutineers have disguised their actions so as to stake a claim on Delano’s boat.

Benito Cereno’s view of blacks is partly an antidote to racial stereotypes, while at the same time, it presents another stereotype. African-Americans as obedient, jovial, and ignorant. It took almost the entire story for Delano to realize that the slaves were capable of a great deal more than he had assumed possible for black men and women. Not only had the slaves murdered their owner (Benito’s friend Alexandro Aranda), but they had the intelligence to arrange the duplicitous meeting between “Captain” Benito and Captain Delano, driving the circumstances to their advantage.

What I found to be another stereotype in the story was the fact that the slaves were the antagonist. In plenty of stories, the black man is seen as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’, and usually in parallel to their dark skin. I did not like that the slaves were the antagonist, even though the story hinted at this possibility more than once (unbeknownst to the trusting Delano). An interesting note was the comparison of the savagery between the slaves and the white authorities: the slaves took Aranda’s body and made of it a sort of display, like a warning on the prow of the ship (a skeleton). And yes, that seems barbaric and disgusting, but when Babo is tried and hanged, his head is put on a pike for display in the city of Lima, another warning of a different sort, but not really different at all. Perhaps a point Melville was trying to convince the reader of is that, despite race, men are very alike in terms of behavior, as both races in the novel are capable of great violence and great intelligence.