Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Why doctor frankenstein is full of Fail.

D

DotCommunist

So many particulars. So many questions.
Starting to despise his fictional self really.

1. Creates eight foot high hideous superhuman monster. The instead of raising it as his minion, he runs away all horrified FAIL

2. On the question of vengeance. He leaves it a bit late. If, after the first childs murder, he'd broken out the weapons and fucked the monster up he'd have been fine! FAIL

3. Anyone dying renders him insensible and useless FAIL




And don't get me started on the ugly=bad beauty= good subtext to the book.
 
4. After totally not killing the monster, he totally doesn't create a monster-ess as requested, thereby missing out on a fortune earned from freaky monster porn. Maybe if he'd invented the internet before reanimation he'd have realised. Loser.
 
DotCommunist said:
And don't get me started on the ugly=bad beauty= good subtext to the book.
Click to expand...

wasn't it noted that although hideously ugly at first the monster was kind and gental he also studied and was inteligent

however the way humans reacted to him drove him to despise his existance... and unlike other who may curse a faceless god his creator is known to him so he goes and first asks for an improvment to his life another creation a woman so he could understand love and tenderness it is only when he is refused he decides that if he must suffer this fate his creator must too

i can't really see something as crude as a ugly=bad beauty= good subtext
 
It's full of monsters, innit?

* The author - some bloke whose name escapes me but is writing a journal of his trip to the arctic (or somewhere - it's been a while since I read it), leaving his family behind to go on a personal quest.

* Frankenstein - tries to play God and then rejects his creation. He makes his revulsion known and condemns him to a life of solitude. Hence the monster reading the Bible and finding out that humankind, as unholy as we are, weren't treated so badly by our creator. If you believe in that sort of thing.

* The other fops who set the writing challenge that spawned the novel. Percy Shelley, Byron, etc. Like most laudanum-addled Romantics they thought they were genii because they could write poems and that, but they were all into personal glory which wasn't what Mary Shelley was bought up to be about.

A lot of it's about why the collective good is better than personal success. And how Dr Frankenstein sucks ass.
 
Shippou-Chan said:
wasn't it noted that although hideously ugly at first the monster was kind and gental he also studied and was inteligent

however the way humans reacted to him drove him to despise his existance... and unlike other who may curse a faceless god his creator is known to him so he goes and first asks for an improvment to his life another creation a woman so he could understand love and tenderness it is only when he is refused he decides that if he must suffer this fate his creator must too

i can't really see something as crude as a ugly=bad beauty= good subtext
Click to expand...


perhaps you forget the how of his wife-His parents found this fair (ie white) creature among brambles (poor dark haired/skinned eyties)


The whole and only reason given for the monsters rejection is his hideous appearance FFS. Human reaction to his hideous visage drives him to extrememe cruelty. But
shelleys story drips with a romantic disdain for things that are ugly and eulogises the pretty.

It really fucks me off. Sometimes in real life the ugly are virtuose, and the beatiful amoral bastards.
 
DotCommunist said:
perhaps you forget the how of his wife-His parents found this fair (ie white) creature among brambles (poor dark haired/skinned eyties)


The whole and only reason given for the monsters rejection is his hideous appearance FFS. Human reaction to his hideous visage drives him to extrememe cruelty. But
shelleys story drips with a romantic disdain for things that are ugly and eulogises the pretty.

It really fucks me off. Sometimes in real life the ugly are virtuose, and the beatiful amoral bastards.
Click to expand...

I don't think this is right. The monster is rejected because he is ugly, but we sympathise with him as he is innocent and good. The ones who reject him are pretty and they indirectly cause all the Evil Things the monster does. Seems pretty obvious where Shelley's opinion is on this to me.
 
Fez909 said:
I don't think this is right. The monster is rejected because he is ugly, but we sympathise with him as he is innocent and good. The ones who reject him are pretty and they indirectly cause all the Evil Things the monster does. Seems pretty obvious where Shelley's opinion is on this to me.
Click to expand...


dude! there was me thinking that my sympathising with the monster was against the authors intention.
It also casts the Dr's arrogance in another light, seems like shelley is mocking that whole centuries clams on science.

All well and good, this view of the text will allow me much more leeway on the marxist criticism i have to do. All that remains is to research 'sorrows of Werter' and decide wha rhat text represents to the monstr (I'm told its OK to be wrong, so long as its well argued)

e2a

I'm going to hinge the 2000 word essay on those three books and what they mean, as well as other things. Basicaly i'll argue that frankenstiens monster represents the working class.




























we'll see what grade im awarded :D
 
I'm going to hinge the 2000 word essay on those three books and what they mean, as well as other things. Basicaly i'll argue that frankenstiens monster represents the working class.
Click to expand...

You're heading in the right direction IMO. If you can find a really slim Open Univeristy equivalent of the York notes books (could be out of print - I read it it '91) it's worth a read.

I think it could be broader than the working class. It's possible to argue that the monster is all of those who strive for / believe in the common good (whatever class they're from). I remember something from the book about how Humphrey Davy was a regular visitor to her parents house when she was a child, and of course he invented the miners lamp - he wasn't a miner and not from the working class but invented something that potentially saved a lot of lives. Compare that to her husband, who wrote poetry about the working class struggle (Peterloo, etc) but was essentially a drugged up, egotistical fop. I'm generalising wildly cause it's ages since I've thought about this, but reading the OU book the night before my finals exam got me a first in that exam.

Not showing off - just can't believe how useful the book was! :) Remember that whatever you think of the books he reads (and I think it's right to consider them), it's all the history the monster has to work from - lots of talk about human beings are revolting but their god never deserts them. Compare and contrast, etc.

Good luck!
 
I think part of Shelley's idea was to criticise what she saw as some kind of cold and masculine "hard science" growing during her time. Possibly by extension the whole masculine mindset. One interesting point is that Frankenstein forgoes love and haviing children in preference for creating his own artificial offspring.
I think the sympathy is supposed to the must be with the monster. One of the tragedies is rather than being a stupid brute the monster is actually very intelligent self-aware. What the monster finds it wants more than anything else - love and belonging, is ironically the things it's creator has abandoned.
 
One interesting point is that Frankenstein forgoes love and haviing children in preference for creating his own artificial offspring.
Click to expand...

Hadn't the Shelly's daughter died by then? Percy was well into being a self-obsessed cock by that time. Hmm.

(If I thought De Niro was going to telephone in his performance in a film about me, I probably would have gone round killing people too...)
 
Plutarchs lives : the monsters introduction to western values/western notions of heroism

Paradise Lost: the monsters christianizing, plus he empathises with the satan character. Shoehorn in a quote freom someone worthy (eagleton maybe) about Milton being one of Romance writings godfathers.

Songs of Werter: the monsters introduction to the moral emptiness of the world.



bobs yer uncle:cool:
 
That whole "did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?" whine is so fucking teenage, Milton or no Milton. No sympathy.
 
Madusa said:
Totally.

Frankenstein was a fucking coward!
Click to expand...

He was. In the book the most shocking thing for me was that Frankenstein didn't own up to the creature killing his brother and that therefore his falsely accused maid Justine got executed.
 
The most shocking thing for me is that a book about a cowardly, whinging, moping, responsibility-shy piece of piss, though utterly unbearable to read, has somehow attained classic status. Shelley thought it didn't suck. FAIL

I bought it as a companion-piece to Dracula. Wish I'd never bothered.

GS(v)
 
Frankenstein can be read as a critique of the authors own class. In Frankenstein’s monster we see an ugly but virtuous symbol of the working class. The new discoveries in science and the avarice of Shelley’s class were instrumental in the creation of the industrialised working class. Frankenstein can be seen to reflect the fear and revulsion of the Bourgeoisie (allied with an increasingly bourgeoisified aristocracy) towards the newly industrialised proletariat. But it is clear to see shelleys symapthies rest with the Monster.. It is the monster who is wronged, it is the monster who is innocence twisted by rejection. Indeed Victor’s complete refusal to accept any guilt is a direct criticism of the hubris of the bourgeois scientific class.
In Victor Frankenstein we can see a symbol for the emergent male scientific arrogance of the time. The closest he gets to any admission of responsibility is to say ‘I felt as if I had committed some great crime, the consciousness of which haunted me. I was guiltless, but had indeed drawn down a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal as that of crime’ (chptr 19 pg 157).
We can see how Dr. Frankenstein’s initial love of old alchemy and superseded science is overthrown by the new Natural Philosophy he encounters in Ingolstadt, yet the aims of those he initially read (Magnus, Paracelsus) still resonate with him in terms of ambition. ’These were men who’s indefatigable zeal modern philosophers were indebted for most of the foundations of their knowledge’ (chptr 2 pg 47). It is the author’s method for showing that the newer, tradition-overthrowing methods suffer from the same hubristic attitudes as the methods they are overturning
Victors self-regarding lamentation, his refusal to acknowledge his debt of guilt could perhaps be Shelley’s closer to home critique of the Romantic poets like her husband who wrote poetry about the class struggle but did little else to address it. Upton Sinclair, author of Mammonart said of Percy “Shelley was one among the sons of Rousseau who did not falter and turn back to feudalism, Catholicism, or mysticism of any sort. He fixed his eyes upon the future, and never wavered for a moment. He attacked class privilege, not merely political, but industrial; and so he is the coming poet of labor.”
Click to expand...




I hate lit theory:mad: doing my nut






Victor is a cock-end and his whiny monster can fuck off. The above took me soddin ages
 
DotCommunist said:
Starting to despise his fictional self really.

1. Creates eight foot high hideous superhuman monster. The instead of raising it as his minion, he runs away all horrified FAIL

2. On the question of vengeance. He leaves it a bit late. If, after the first childs murder, he'd broken out the weapons and fucked the monster up he'd have been fine! FAIL

3. Anyone dying renders him insensible and useless FAIL




And don't get me started on the ugly=bad beauty= good subtext to the book.
Click to expand...
4: The main problem was that he blew his research grant on a whopping great castle instead of a modest but well kitted out lab and a team of trained professional assistants.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

bemused
Doctor Who Presents?
Replies
9
Views
142
Silas Loom
Silas Loom
danny la rouge
Doctor Who 2024 - News, views, spin-offs
30 31 32 33 34
Replies
1K
Views
25K
mojo pixy
mojo pixy
R
Why doesnt modern literature deal with current affairs?
2 3
Replies
66
Views
1K
Elpenor
Elpenor
danny la rouge
Doctor Who 2023
31 32 33 34 35
Replies
1K
Views
25K
CNT36
C
Throbbing Angel
Cory Doctorow Humble Bundle
Replies
2
Views
140
Artaxerxes
Artaxerxes
Back
Top Bottom