Frankenstein-up to pg 153

This book is good, I like it, and I just stopped reading it pretty much in the peak of the good part, where Victor just got married but has not seen the monster yet.  I was wondering why Victor thought he was going to die on his wedding night, and not Elizabeth.  This was jumping out of the page at me, and I would guess that Elizabeth is going to die in the near future.  This would hurt Victor much more then his own death.  Although for as sad as Victor seems, he is also very scared of his death.  He has avoided it with the monster, and when he was in danger of dying out at sea, he was really scared as well.  I am not sure, but I would think that if you were in that much self-caused pain, that it might be weird to still be terrified of death, almost as if he likes being in this misery and turmoil.

When the monster was telling his tale, one of his actions jumped out at me, and I think it happens in real life a lot.  In sociology, they call it something like the labeling theory.  The monster wanted to be loved by his "protectors," and wanted to be good to them.  After the family sees the monster, Felix moves the family away from their cottage in fear of another encounter with the monster.  The monster then continues to light the cottage on fire until it burns downs.  The family would have heard about the cottage burning down, and thought they were right about moving away and the monster being awful.  I think this happens a lot in general.  If a teacher labels a kid a trouble maker, then a lot of times the kid figures that if he is already a trouble maker, why not be funny or whatever and cause trouble.  Or if kids in a bad part of town are not expected to go to college, then there is no consequence if they put no effort forward and drop out of school.

Are Victor and the monster the same person?  If so, why does Victor want to kill his loved ones?

-The word "wretch" is first found describing Victor by Walton when they find him n the beginning on the sled in the ice

-he describes the monster as a "wretch" as well

-he then describes that he spent the night wretchedly

-he uses the word a lot in general, now there are words like that too like "cool" ,"sick" or "gross".  That dead thing is gross, or That's a gross hoody (means cool)

-his father describes the environment (which was created by the monster) that Victor would come home to as wretchedness because William died

-when Victor is going home, he says that he is destined to become the most wretched of human beings

-Elizabeth is described as thinking that she caused the murder, and that made her very wretched

-It seems to me that the word wretch follows the murderer around, so maybe they are the same person?

This is a very interesting thing to think about.  Part of me thinks that there is no chance this is the case that they are the same person because of the fact that the monster tells about how he watched that family for a year, and things like that.  Although Victor I guess could just imagine this, and imagine in is head some part of his inner self could be scaling mountains, which seemed like kind of a stretch anyways.  The real flag to me though is his mother hurt him by dying.  So why would Victor kill other people close to him?  I do not think he would be protecting himself by killing loved ones since that is the way his mother hurt him so bad.  I feel like he fears that the most, so I'm not sure why he would do that.  I would think it would be better for him to just run away forever, or something like that.

monster's tale

How does the Monster's tale make you feel?

Initially, because of what happened to Justine and William, I hated the monster just as Victor did.  I then felt bad for the monster, though, as he was telling his tale.  I never thought about what the monster was thinking or feeling.  I guess I assumed that the monster awoke, and was just a man because of how big he was.  I never thought that when he awoke, he was essentially a baby who knew nothing, and initially could not even see, hear, or talk.  I feel what has happened is Victor's fault, but not completely because he created it, but more so because of the fact that he abandoned the monster.  If he had stayed with the monster, he could have essentially raised it almost like a child.  Instead he left the monster, and as a result of a chain of events, all the gloom surrounded Victor.

Frankenstein, 2 class

There are a couple of things in this novel so far that I really was curious about, and I'm sure I might have missed something in the book that may have explained these things that came to my mind.  Victor created the monster, and then as a result got very sick and had to be nursed back to health by his friend Clerval until the spring.  It seemed that once he got better though, he kind of forgot about this monster, which struck me as odd.  If he had been sick for months by having a nervous breakdown and had been hallucinating about this monster, I would have thought that once he got better he would have taken action in finding the monster.  Before he received a letter from his father, Victor even said, "My own spirits were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity."  I guess I wondered how he forgot completely about his creation, and did not try to find him or alert people of his presence.  

I also really could not comprehend why Victor didn't step up in Justine's defense and tell everyone he knew who killed his brother.  Victor said he would have stepped forward and confessed to the murder, but he was not in town and people would just think he was insane.  But I was thinking it through and it does not make sense to me.  Victor was gone for 6 years, so if he was in school for a year or two, and after creating the monster then had to get nursed back from health and also went on a trip with Clerval before going home, then I think he would have spent at least two years creating the beast.  So if Victor was working day and night on this monster for two years, I would think he would have so much evidence of his work.  He would have those spare body parts laying around and he'd have his lab or working space where there would have to be all his work.  I would guess there would be countless formulas and drawings and all of his workings documented somewhere.  Why could he not bring his work that would have been documented and showed the court this?  I like reading this book a lot, but it was really hard for me to get over this last point of mine as I was reading about Justine getting put to death.  I just saw the movie "Jerry Maguire" the other day and was having the same thoughts.  At the end of the movie, Cuba Gooding Jr gets injured in the end zone in an evening game.  Somehow Tom Cruise gets from the media area onto the field in like 17 seconds, which would have realistically taken like 45 minutes if possible at all .  He then goes from an evening football game (that typically go from 8:00-11:30), and has to fly from Phoenix to his home, gets his bags in the airport, and drive home.  He gets home and there is some sort of divorced woman support group meeting there that his wife is a part of.  There is no way he could get home before 3 or 4 AM, yet they are meeting as if it is 8 at night.  Most sports movies are kind of absurd in some way, but this ten minute period of Jerry Maguire was hard to get over.  I really like the movie, but there was blatantly just no conceivable way.  This is how I thought about some of the things in Frankenstein I said above, and especially how Victor does not help Justine.  I really like the book so far, but I do not understand why Victor thinks no one would believe him when he would have so much evidence of the creation of the monster.  I guess it could be kind of like The Scarlet Letter, in that he has this secret that he does not dispose to others and is just eating him alive inside, but it seems to me he wants to tell people but can't for some reason.

Victor vs. Walton

So far, I think that Victor and Walton are very similar characters, but have a couple major differences.  They at first seem very similar in their actions, and Walton seems like he is a younger Victor.  He is on the same path, and that is why Victor is telling him this story.  They both were in pursuit of greatness, and both basically would live in isolation, or away from family and friends, to achieve this greatness.  I think Victor was in more pursuit of greatness though because of his love of science, whereas Walton is in pursuit of fame.  Victor was intrigued by science, and it was his passion, whereas it seemed to me that Walton was just trying to find a field to gain fame by.  Victor was gone from home I think it said for 6 years, so he was probably working for 4 of those years, where Walton quit poetry after only one year, and then went on to be a discoverer.

Frankenstein intro

Walton-poet, discoverer  \         both 

Victor-scientist                  /         artists

I am very curious to see how Walton's mindset changes from the beginning of the novel to the end.  Walton has this intense desire for fame, by trying to be a poet, and now trying to get to the north pole.  He then finds Victor chasing what is assumed to be his creation, and aids him back to health.  Victor goes on to tell Walton his tale, because it is evident to see the obsession Walton has that Victor once had.  There are a lot of examples in the media about how characters obsessed with meeting some goal eventually ruins them, or produces very bad results in their life.  Although there are so many examples of this,  the example that immediately came to my mind (probably not a good thing) was an example in the TV show Entourage.  

Vince was obsessed with making the movie "Medellin".  No studio will make the movie so he buys it from a rich director.  The man who sold the rights to the script to Vince says that he saw a man with that kind of passion once, and it led to his demise.  He gave Vince the advice to not let a movie drive him crazy, that it wasn't worth it.  This advice reminded me of the advice Victor gave to Walton.  Vince sells his home to pay for the script, going broke, and letting everything ride on this movie.  It eventually ends up flopping, and he ends up broke with a struggling career and with his mom in Queens.  I'm not sure if this example is the most scholarly, especially since it's a TV show on HBO; but it was one man telling the other that his obsession will not end well.  I am interested to see if Walton heeds Victors advice, and learns from Victors story, or if Walton is ill-fated as well.

I might have missed this, but I was wondering how Victor came about all these spare body parts.  He said he had this room in the attic or something like that, and it was the place where he kept all these body parts.  I wonder where he went at night to find spare parts for this Frankenstein.  I started reading a little past where we were supposed to, and I was trying to picture the creature he made.  It seemed to me like some morbid Mr. Potato Head.  It had all these random body parts combined to make some horrible looking monster

wuthering heights-class

One source that I kinda wanted to watch, and people have not mentioned, is the movie "Wuthering Heights" made by Mtv in 2003.  It was nowhere to be found so I could not watch it, and the assignment was for a scene or the book to become more clear, when that would not be the case at all.  I'm sure the movie would be completely ridiculous, but that is kinda why I wanted to watch it, and see how closely they are related to each other.  I think it would show how society now shows most things for our generation.  It is described in a blurb about the show:

MTV takes a stab at this gothic love story in its own made for network version. And why not? It’s got all the things the kids like: true love, broken hearts, a little bit of fighting, and dash of kissy kissy. And without Bronte’s elegant prose, we’re left with a story that’s really just a glorified soap opera. And hey…attention span-problems? No problem. Bronte’s epic is slimmed down to less than 90 minutes. And if you like good production values, cool lighting and music… MTV knows how to deliver the goods.

The movie follows the book in a Cliff Notes sort of way, and psychological depth has been eschewed in favor of something more easily digestible. Heathcliff becomes “Heath" (Mike Vogel); Cathy becomes “Cate” (Erika Christensen). Now Vogel (not a stranger to remakes – see Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is no Larry Olivier, but he seems really really committed to playing a man in love and out of control. And he looks hot. So the girls will like that. Christensen is also used to playing characters out of control, from her star making performance in Traffic to her embarrassing portrayal in Swimfan.. I’d say her performance is somewhere in the middle of those two polarizing films. She’s very natural, but at the same time, she tries to find emotions and moments that just aren’t within her range yet.

Heathcliff was the main character of the book, so it makes sense he is the main character in the movie.  He is portrayed as a heartthrob in the movie because he had half the personality of one in the book, and if that part is shown he could be one in the movie.  He seemed to brood a lot, which could be good to show in a Mtv movie.  He also was in the middle of two romances, which would be good for a movie as well.

wuthering heights-last assignment

What does the article "The Unreliable narrator in Wuthering Heights" do that better helps me understand the interaction between Lockwood and Nelly, and the story overall.

I was looking for an article that discussed the two narrators of the book, and how reliable they were.  Something I did not think of until the end of the book is that most of it is told through the eyes of Nelly, and some through Lockwood; not through an author like a more traditional novel.  This became apparent to me as the book went on, and especially near the end of it. When Nelly is discussing young Catherine with Lockwood right before he leaves, she insinuate the only way to save Catherine is through marriage.  Nelly obviously cannot marry her, but Lockwood can.  She also comments on how she thinks Lockwood is/or will fall in love with Catherine.  She was not so subtly telling Lockwood to go for Catherine, then for both of them to go away together. Around this time, I also noticed that Nelly, in her descriptions of Catherine, was really forgiving of her weaknesses and really praised her. This struck me as odd because Catherine seemed very similiar to her mother Catherine, and Nelly was not kind in her description of her.  I thought young Catherine possibly even teased Hareton in a worse way then her mother ever teased Heathcliff, but Nelly makes her out to be much kinder than her mother. This occurred near the end of the book though, and I did not really catch Nelly telling subtle lies earlier in the book.  I thought it was very possible they were there, though, so I searched for an article that discussed this subject.

The article pointed out three possible reasons why Nelly was an unreliable narrator.  The first reason pointed out something that did not even occur to me.  Near the end of the novel, I was able to see a probable gap between the actual reality and her narration of it to Lockwood.  She did not blatantly lie, but told stories in a way that would benefit her goal. I thought that she was deliberatly doing this, but the author said that "her pedestrian approach to the tempestuous characters of the novel manifests her essential misunderstanding of them." This is something I think that is pretty important to think about.  She could misunderstand some events going on because of her education level or how she has been trained to act and think out of function more then reason.  She could then misdescribe events because she was confused or did not fully grasp people's thoughts and intentions rather then the fact that she is stretching events that happened intentionally in her favor.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a critic named James Hafley believes that Nelly Dean, not Heathcliff, is actually the villian of this novel. Hafely believes that Nelly Dean is trying to gain control of both of the estates, but can only do this after Heathcliff is gone and if she has control over Cathy; or if both are gone. This is also interesting to me because Nelly used to play with Heathcliff when they were younger, but then because of some abritrary class labeling (all the class labeling seems absurd to me in this novel because they are in complete isolation; it seems worthless) she is now a servent to Heathcliff. I could see, from human nature, greed, and jealousy; Nelly wanting to gain control of both properties. This could explain her wanting Lockwood to take Cathy away as well. I think this is unlikely though, but worth thinking about.  

Another possibility the article pointed out was that Nelly only lied to benefit some characters she liked or felt sorry for.  I think this is probable, 99% of the lies I tell fall into this category.  If I go home on break, and lets say go visit a bunch of buddies, my mom might ask if I saw one friend.  Instead of explaining everything I did for 20 minutes, I might just say yes to avoid a worthless conversation.  A better example might be if your girlfriend asks if she looks good at a particular time; you always say yes.  In kind of the same mindset, Nelly lied at times to avoid conflict or improve people's feelings.  So one article discussed the possibility that Nelly just had a misunderstanding of events and the characters which led to inconsistencies, whereas another article tried to persuade us that she told minor lies to benefit other characters she was close to, and the last article talked about the possibility that Nelly was plotting her takeover of both properties which directed the way she told her story to Lockwood.

The article, then attempts to prove that Nelly is an unreliable narrator. My opinion is that Nelly is not 100% reliable; only Lockwood could have the potential to be that, because he is an outside source. He does not really have emotional feelings that could force him to sway the facts. I think it is impossible for Nelly to be completely objective because she has seen everything that has happened and been close to some characters, and despised other characters. I think human nature would prevent the possibility of her being 100% accurate. My opinion is that Nelly tells lies, but they are to benefit other people. There is history of this in the book as well. Near the middle of the book, she told Linton that Heathcliff was a kind and generous man. She also told Edgar, when he was dying, that Catherine was safe and would be home soon, when that was not the case at all. Neither of these lies really changed anything, and especially not in her favor.  They were more to make the person she was lying to feel better.  So my opinion is that Nelly is a fairly reliable narrator but does not comrehend some actions, thus she cannot retell them accurately. I think she also lies a little, but insignificant lies that save the characters' feelings from getting hurt. I do not think that she alters the story considerably though.  Although it was interesting for me to think about the idea that she was planning her dominance over both properties, I think that this is more humorous then anything near the truth at all.