Jeez, Adam’s learning a lot from just skulking outside of a house. I guess houses weren't very well insulated back in the day.
Most of this chapter is actually framed more around the family which Adam continues to observe. Felix seems to have arranged for an.. adoption?... of a foreign woman named Safie into the family. I’m not sure for what purpose. But whatever the reason, Safie is brought into the house and Adam learns that in fact there are more languages than just… German I’m going to assume?
Adam also begins to remark upon the need for humans to learn from one another. How they are inextricably bound together. It’s actually rather touching and sad, as he realizes that he, by contrast, has no others like him. He’s an outsider and seems afraid of making contact with the people.
Finally, Adam seems to begin holding a different opinion of humankind after learning some of Western history. He’s at once astounded at how marvelous humans can be, and at how awful they’ve been. He holds humans in such high regard that he seems unable to reconcile the two. He begins to recognize his own difference from humans, particularly his size, greater agility, and ability to subsist on rougher diet and withstand the elements more easily. He realizes that he’s a monster by some definition.
He also begins to understand what an odd thing “knowing” or “awareness” is, and how it is a hard thing to shake off when someone knows something. Yay for education, although it’s something I’ve sometimes struggled with in educating students in the critical paradigm.
This chapter feels more like build-up in some ways. Adam’s clearly building to some inevitable confrontation with the family and is trying to set it up. That said, while this chapter is basically a continuation from last chapter, the last chapter was fine and so this one is too.
Monday, June 13, 2016
Frankenstein - Chapter 12
I’m really enjoying this!
It’s not like I wasn’t enjoying Victor’s chapters. They were fine, but in general I find the sort of melodrama to be tiresome. As if it’s serving the point that violence and character deaths seem to serve in a lot of modern media. Give me these cogitations any day over that.
Adam has taken to observing the family from the last chapter over a period of months. The family, consisting of an older blind man, and his children Felix and Agatha, are a fine sort of family. They aren’t quite the Cratchetts in terms of how doggedly good-spirited they are, but they’re fine. Adam watches them and learns about communication, mostly.
Adam’s concerns about communication remind me of one of my favorite books: Speaking into the Air by John Durham Peters. It’s an account of the history of the idea of communication, and how that idea has never been a particularly agreed-upon concept throughout history. Adam marvels at the strangeness not only of language, but of writing, which he acknowledges as far beyond his comprehension.
Also, also, Adam is just adorable with his helping around the house. He goes out at night to pick up timber and clear the snow out from around the family’s house so that Felix can do other tasks during the day. When he notes that the family is poor, he recognizes that his filching of their food is doing harm to them, and so he sticks to eating roots and berries from the forest.
Adam spends months in his shack watching the family, as I’d said. Winter passes to spring (come to think of it, while we had a sort of rough timeline from the start of the narrative to Vic’s creating Adam, we sort of stopped keeping time after that), and the village they are in begins to teem with life again. Adam, as I’ve mentioned, is wonderful. I really love his appreciation of the world around him as contrasted against Vic’s. Whereas Victor, who by all accounts seems to be a rather diminutive and sickly person, is astounded and loves the sublime parts of nature – mountains, storms, great lakes. Adam, meanwhile, seems to take so much appreciation in very subtle aspects of the world around him – birds singing, the phases of the moon, seasons changing. It’s really quite beautiful the balance that’s struck between the two of them. I’m not sure that one is necessarily better than another, but it feels like Shelley is very deliberately making a sort of commentary about the romantic movement and its sort of fascination with the sublime and wondering if perhaps it takes more subtle aspects of nature for granted.
Really enjoying this. Adam wants to talk to the family. I hope this goes okay, but I expect it won’t
It’s not like I wasn’t enjoying Victor’s chapters. They were fine, but in general I find the sort of melodrama to be tiresome. As if it’s serving the point that violence and character deaths seem to serve in a lot of modern media. Give me these cogitations any day over that.
Adam has taken to observing the family from the last chapter over a period of months. The family, consisting of an older blind man, and his children Felix and Agatha, are a fine sort of family. They aren’t quite the Cratchetts in terms of how doggedly good-spirited they are, but they’re fine. Adam watches them and learns about communication, mostly.
Adam’s concerns about communication remind me of one of my favorite books: Speaking into the Air by John Durham Peters. It’s an account of the history of the idea of communication, and how that idea has never been a particularly agreed-upon concept throughout history. Adam marvels at the strangeness not only of language, but of writing, which he acknowledges as far beyond his comprehension.
Also, also, Adam is just adorable with his helping around the house. He goes out at night to pick up timber and clear the snow out from around the family’s house so that Felix can do other tasks during the day. When he notes that the family is poor, he recognizes that his filching of their food is doing harm to them, and so he sticks to eating roots and berries from the forest.
Adam spends months in his shack watching the family, as I’d said. Winter passes to spring (come to think of it, while we had a sort of rough timeline from the start of the narrative to Vic’s creating Adam, we sort of stopped keeping time after that), and the village they are in begins to teem with life again. Adam, as I’ve mentioned, is wonderful. I really love his appreciation of the world around him as contrasted against Vic’s. Whereas Victor, who by all accounts seems to be a rather diminutive and sickly person, is astounded and loves the sublime parts of nature – mountains, storms, great lakes. Adam, meanwhile, seems to take so much appreciation in very subtle aspects of the world around him – birds singing, the phases of the moon, seasons changing. It’s really quite beautiful the balance that’s struck between the two of them. I’m not sure that one is necessarily better than another, but it feels like Shelley is very deliberately making a sort of commentary about the romantic movement and its sort of fascination with the sublime and wondering if perhaps it takes more subtle aspects of nature for granted.
Really enjoying this. Adam wants to talk to the family. I hope this goes okay, but I expect it won’t
Sunday, June 5, 2016
Frankenstein - Chapter 11
This was so cool!
So first off—Vic apparently has an eidetic memory for what people said! I kid, of course, but there are times where the “person recounting a story” narrative does raise a bit of a logistical question. I thought this a lot in Heart of Darkness, with my thought mostly being that the people who Marlow spoke to must’ve had the wind let out of their sails by the time it was all over.
Adam begins recounting his journey starting with (I think) when he left Vic’s place. The narration seems to imply that he pretty much wasn’t conscious until he was already out in this forest. Even to a certain point, he’s barely able to make sense of what’s around him. Still, there are some apparent instincts which drive him. For one, he still needs to eat and drink. I’m kind of surprised by this, actually. I didn’t think a person made from a bunch of cut-up cadavers and animated by electricity would feel hunger like we do, since the material of his body is already dead. I know it’s probably just Shelley playing loose with biology, but there’s certainly an interesting posthuman claim toward human ontology in this sequence. Adam finds certain noises and visuals innately pleasurable, and some to be harsh. There’s definitely a sort of nature/nurture thing here, with some of the argument seeming to favor nature. “Yes, sparrows are just annoying. Yes, blackbirds sound pretty to everyone” here.
From here, Adam begins a basic exploration of the world around him. He observes the phases of the moon and the passage from day to night. He becomes fascinated by fire and tries to figure it out to use it for cooking and warmth and light. Quite a liberty Hollywood took there!
Eventually, Adam decides to leave the forest and begin wandering. He scares some shepherd out of his hut one night, totally unintentionally, and begins eating his food and understanding the concept of a constructed shelter. From here, he goes to a village and.. well it doesn’t go well, but not nearly as poorly as I’d’ve thought. The villagers aren’t nice to ol’ Adam, they either shriek or run away or attack him. But they aren’t coming out in a full-on mob at him, they seem content to just turn him away from their village.
Afterward he takes up residence in a shack and observes, what I think, is supposed to be a family at their work. He is fascinated by the whole scenario he watches unfold and is really quite a sensitive creature.
I liked this chapter a lot. We’re really getting into a good exploration of what it is to be human and of consciousness! This is the stuff that so much of sci-fi still delves into almost two centuries later!
So first off—Vic apparently has an eidetic memory for what people said! I kid, of course, but there are times where the “person recounting a story” narrative does raise a bit of a logistical question. I thought this a lot in Heart of Darkness, with my thought mostly being that the people who Marlow spoke to must’ve had the wind let out of their sails by the time it was all over.
Adam begins recounting his journey starting with (I think) when he left Vic’s place. The narration seems to imply that he pretty much wasn’t conscious until he was already out in this forest. Even to a certain point, he’s barely able to make sense of what’s around him. Still, there are some apparent instincts which drive him. For one, he still needs to eat and drink. I’m kind of surprised by this, actually. I didn’t think a person made from a bunch of cut-up cadavers and animated by electricity would feel hunger like we do, since the material of his body is already dead. I know it’s probably just Shelley playing loose with biology, but there’s certainly an interesting posthuman claim toward human ontology in this sequence. Adam finds certain noises and visuals innately pleasurable, and some to be harsh. There’s definitely a sort of nature/nurture thing here, with some of the argument seeming to favor nature. “Yes, sparrows are just annoying. Yes, blackbirds sound pretty to everyone” here.
From here, Adam begins a basic exploration of the world around him. He observes the phases of the moon and the passage from day to night. He becomes fascinated by fire and tries to figure it out to use it for cooking and warmth and light. Quite a liberty Hollywood took there!
Eventually, Adam decides to leave the forest and begin wandering. He scares some shepherd out of his hut one night, totally unintentionally, and begins eating his food and understanding the concept of a constructed shelter. From here, he goes to a village and.. well it doesn’t go well, but not nearly as poorly as I’d’ve thought. The villagers aren’t nice to ol’ Adam, they either shriek or run away or attack him. But they aren’t coming out in a full-on mob at him, they seem content to just turn him away from their village.
Afterward he takes up residence in a shack and observes, what I think, is supposed to be a family at their work. He is fascinated by the whole scenario he watches unfold and is really quite a sensitive creature.
I liked this chapter a lot. We’re really getting into a good exploration of what it is to be human and of consciousness! This is the stuff that so much of sci-fi still delves into almost two centuries later!
Frankenstein - Chapter 10
Well this should offer up a change
Vic, after having departed for a nearby village in the Alps, decides to go on a multi-day hike over a glacier. Again, he’s rather dramatic in his whole approach to nature, marveling on it apparently out loud as he goes on his hikes. Suddenly, he sees a figure running up on him. It’s his creation, who we finally have speaking.
The creation, who I’ll now refer to as Adam since he seems to have become his own character, is really bent out of shape in confronting Victor. He’s angry and confused and upset all at once over Victor’s apparent abandonment of him. He wonders why Victor didn’t just kill him, and he asks that Victor at least listen to his story of how he came to be here before he decides whether or not he’ll continue in attempting to kill Adam. Adam, for his part, seems really reasonable about the whole thing. He’s rather fond of the religious metaphor of their relationship (which… yeah that’s fair). And he’s.. actually quite a bit like Victor. Both very dramatic and concerned with their pain.
Victor is trying to not have any of Adam’s complaints and questions though. Which is totally unfair! Adam is pretty blameless in this exchange so far. Eventually though, Victor agrees to go hear Adam out in a nearby shack.
A few things: Adam’s initial charge at Victor is accompanied by a rather extreme threat against not only Victor but his family as well. So, is the book actually lending credence to the possibility that, against all odds, Adam somehow made it out to Geneva and then found Vic’s specific family and murdered his brother? I mean, where they are now is even further from Ingolstadt, so I guess so. Don’t know how I’ll take it if I found out he killed William intentionally.
Also (total fake question) so how did Vic know a poem that Shelley’s husband wrote in 1816 when the story takes place in the 1700’s? Mysteries abound!
Vic, after having departed for a nearby village in the Alps, decides to go on a multi-day hike over a glacier. Again, he’s rather dramatic in his whole approach to nature, marveling on it apparently out loud as he goes on his hikes. Suddenly, he sees a figure running up on him. It’s his creation, who we finally have speaking.
The creation, who I’ll now refer to as Adam since he seems to have become his own character, is really bent out of shape in confronting Victor. He’s angry and confused and upset all at once over Victor’s apparent abandonment of him. He wonders why Victor didn’t just kill him, and he asks that Victor at least listen to his story of how he came to be here before he decides whether or not he’ll continue in attempting to kill Adam. Adam, for his part, seems really reasonable about the whole thing. He’s rather fond of the religious metaphor of their relationship (which… yeah that’s fair). And he’s.. actually quite a bit like Victor. Both very dramatic and concerned with their pain.
Victor is trying to not have any of Adam’s complaints and questions though. Which is totally unfair! Adam is pretty blameless in this exchange so far. Eventually though, Victor agrees to go hear Adam out in a nearby shack.
A few things: Adam’s initial charge at Victor is accompanied by a rather extreme threat against not only Victor but his family as well. So, is the book actually lending credence to the possibility that, against all odds, Adam somehow made it out to Geneva and then found Vic’s specific family and murdered his brother? I mean, where they are now is even further from Ingolstadt, so I guess so. Don’t know how I’ll take it if I found out he killed William intentionally.
Also (total fake question) so how did Vic know a poem that Shelley’s husband wrote in 1816 when the story takes place in the 1700’s? Mysteries abound!
Frankenstein - Chapter 9
Well, it was about time someone called Vic out.
Not much really occurs this chapter in a plot sense. It’s mostly spent with Vic and the two main members of his family (poor Ernest) each kind of telling him off in their own way. Vic’s father’s advice, while coming at Vic from an angle steeped in patriarchal ideas of expression, does kind of tap into a problem that Vic seems to face. He can’t recognize that other people feel pain too. While I’m annoyed that Alphonse shames Victor for apparently grieving, it is irritating because his advice is actually kind of spot on. Just for the wrong reasons.
I mean hell, Elizabeth tells him that she’s been really shaken in her faith by the conviction of Justine, Vic makes it entirely about himself. She goes to worrying about him because he is so overwrought in everything about his expression that she has to wonder about his safety (which I’ll get to in a moment) during her own grief.
Here’s the thing though. Vic seems like he’s genuinely really rattled by the whole experiment thing. He needs to talk to someone about this. He contemplates suicide via drowning (which… yikes) to just remove himself from other people’s lives… I mean, I feel like he’s approaching this whole thing wrong. But I can’t deny that, whether or not he’s projecting the whole “monster murdered my brother” thing, he’s still so obviously out of sorts about the whole creating an abomination, thing.
I actually didn’t know that Frank in the book would be so torn up about this. Again, popular version of Vic seems to imply that he was rather proud of his creation, or at least proud of himself for having created it. We’re nearly halfway through the book and we’re still kind of on Vic’s trauma about the whole thing. It’s really cool though
[Later edit: I had this review typed out more fully and then my computer restarted without saving it, so I had to mostly retype it from memory. I think I've gotten most of it recounted, but I had already read the next chapter when I had to do the rewrite. guh.]
Not much really occurs this chapter in a plot sense. It’s mostly spent with Vic and the two main members of his family (poor Ernest) each kind of telling him off in their own way. Vic’s father’s advice, while coming at Vic from an angle steeped in patriarchal ideas of expression, does kind of tap into a problem that Vic seems to face. He can’t recognize that other people feel pain too. While I’m annoyed that Alphonse shames Victor for apparently grieving, it is irritating because his advice is actually kind of spot on. Just for the wrong reasons.
I mean hell, Elizabeth tells him that she’s been really shaken in her faith by the conviction of Justine, Vic makes it entirely about himself. She goes to worrying about him because he is so overwrought in everything about his expression that she has to wonder about his safety (which I’ll get to in a moment) during her own grief.
Here’s the thing though. Vic seems like he’s genuinely really rattled by the whole experiment thing. He needs to talk to someone about this. He contemplates suicide via drowning (which… yikes) to just remove himself from other people’s lives… I mean, I feel like he’s approaching this whole thing wrong. But I can’t deny that, whether or not he’s projecting the whole “monster murdered my brother” thing, he’s still so obviously out of sorts about the whole creating an abomination, thing.
I actually didn’t know that Frank in the book would be so torn up about this. Again, popular version of Vic seems to imply that he was rather proud of his creation, or at least proud of himself for having created it. We’re nearly halfway through the book and we’re still kind of on Vic’s trauma about the whole thing. It’s really cool though
[Later edit: I had this review typed out more fully and then my computer restarted without saving it, so I had to mostly retype it from memory. I think I've gotten most of it recounted, but I had already read the next chapter when I had to do the rewrite. guh.]
Frankenstein - Chapter 8
Goddamn Vic, get over yourself!
Justine has her trial, and (surprise surprise) it doesn’t go as Liz and Victor thought it would. Justine is pretty much convicted on the spot by her judges, as there is no evidence to contradict her alibi. She calls on friends to testify to her character, but they all refuse to be of any help. Which… wow, that's cold, people.
Once again, Vic’s family shows themselves to be a bastion of doe-eyed cherubs when Elizabeth begins to defend the person who her family is kind of the plaintiff against; because she’s so distraught at how unfair it is that Justine’s friends abandoned her like that. I have to say that if Elizabeth isn’t actually one of those porcelain angels I’m shocked.
Later, Vic and Elizabeth visit Justine in her cell (or wherever they held the condemned back then) and Vic is just insufferable. The entirety of the narration is Vic just remarking on how much the anguish that Elizabeth and a person who is LITERALLY CONDEMNED TO DIE pales in comparison of him totes knowing for absolute suresies that Justine wasn’t the murderer, but he can’t tell anyone that it was really his creation. Like… Vic, you don’t even know if it was your creation. Hell, your entire idea is actually entirely self-serving! You think that your creation was so awesome that it could make it 300 miles, find out who your family was, kill your brother, and then plant evidence to throw the investigators off the case? Jeez dude, it’s impressive that it can even walk at all. All in all, while I kind of understand the dilemma that Vic is in somewhat, his attitude really is just making the entire thing about his own pain in the situation with pretty much no empathy for the person who is literally condemned to die or the person who is basically having all of her rosy-eyed ideas of the world destroyed entirely. I mean, it’s not like any of this is out of character for Victor either. He’s just very self-absorbed. He’s not quite Humbert Humbert yet, but I’d put him at about Hamlet levels.
Justine has her trial, and (surprise surprise) it doesn’t go as Liz and Victor thought it would. Justine is pretty much convicted on the spot by her judges, as there is no evidence to contradict her alibi. She calls on friends to testify to her character, but they all refuse to be of any help. Which… wow, that's cold, people.
Once again, Vic’s family shows themselves to be a bastion of doe-eyed cherubs when Elizabeth begins to defend the person who her family is kind of the plaintiff against; because she’s so distraught at how unfair it is that Justine’s friends abandoned her like that. I have to say that if Elizabeth isn’t actually one of those porcelain angels I’m shocked.
Later, Vic and Elizabeth visit Justine in her cell (or wherever they held the condemned back then) and Vic is just insufferable. The entirety of the narration is Vic just remarking on how much the anguish that Elizabeth and a person who is LITERALLY CONDEMNED TO DIE pales in comparison of him totes knowing for absolute suresies that Justine wasn’t the murderer, but he can’t tell anyone that it was really his creation. Like… Vic, you don’t even know if it was your creation. Hell, your entire idea is actually entirely self-serving! You think that your creation was so awesome that it could make it 300 miles, find out who your family was, kill your brother, and then plant evidence to throw the investigators off the case? Jeez dude, it’s impressive that it can even walk at all. All in all, while I kind of understand the dilemma that Vic is in somewhat, his attitude really is just making the entire thing about his own pain in the situation with pretty much no empathy for the person who is literally condemned to die or the person who is basically having all of her rosy-eyed ideas of the world destroyed entirely. I mean, it’s not like any of this is out of character for Victor either. He’s just very self-absorbed. He’s not quite Humbert Humbert yet, but I’d put him at about Hamlet levels.
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Frankenstein - Chapter 7
TW for discussion of murder
Okay so we get some big news in this chapter
Vic’s youngest brother was murdered!
In a letter Vic receives from his father (whose name is Alphonse, it turns out!), he learns that while out on the town one day, Vic’s two younger brothers wandered off, and while Ernest returned in the afternoon, William never did. After papa Frank goes off and searches for him, he finds William’s body splayed out and apparently strangled to death.
Elizabeth is pretty wracked with guilt over this, considering that William was carrying around a picture of his mother that day which Elizabeth had given him, and when they found the body the picture had gone missing. This makes Liz think that the murderer must’ve wanted it. (I think it was in some kind of locket).
Upon receiving this news, Vic becomes distraught and sets to travel to Geneva right away. For a moment it seemed like Clerval would be coming with, which, while it would continue his characterization of being literally the too-perfect friend, would also have been sort of hilarious with its continuation of the idea that he’ll just kind of throw away everything for Vic at a moment’s notice. But no, Vic makes this journey alone.
On the road to Geneva, Vic has several really great melodramatic moments. Several times in particular he screams at nature. “Dear mountains! my own beautiful lake! how do you welcome your wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?” and later he shouts that at an absent William that a storm is his funeral dirge. It reminds me a lot of this list I found online a while back called “how to tell if you’re in a Dostoevsky novel” where one of the entries is “At least once each day you stop in a stairwell to clutch the banister and yell out ‘My God, how loathsome it all is!’”
While at an inn one night in the mountains, Vic thinks he sees his creation in the shadows. The figure quickly disappears but Vic is convinced not only that it was the skaab that he saw, but that his creation is in fact the real murderer of his brother… like, okay? Vic just kinda ignores any and all logistics of this and is like “Yeah, my monster traveled 700 km over mountains, made it to my hometown, murdered my brother and took a picture of my mother away, then traipsed back to around Mont Blanc so that I could see it in the shadows… sounds about right.”
It’s not just that Vic thinks this to himself either. When he gets home he starts telling everyone that he knows who the real murderer is. When his family tells him that Justine has been arrested for it and is being tried that day, he’s distressed that there’s such an apparent miscarriage of justice. “no your honor, my monster from Ingolstadt killed my brother!” Vic is convinced that, because the courts are just, and because Justine is totes innocent, that she’ll get off and then they can set about doing some monster hunting. Of course, I will say that it’s kinda suspicious that some other member of the household staff just happened to find the photo in Justine’s room. Currently I’m suspicious of Justine and this other staff member, but we’ll see where this goes. I don’t think this book will linger here long, as I don’t believe it’s a murder mystery novel.
Okay so we get some big news in this chapter
Vic’s youngest brother was murdered!
In a letter Vic receives from his father (whose name is Alphonse, it turns out!), he learns that while out on the town one day, Vic’s two younger brothers wandered off, and while Ernest returned in the afternoon, William never did. After papa Frank goes off and searches for him, he finds William’s body splayed out and apparently strangled to death.
Elizabeth is pretty wracked with guilt over this, considering that William was carrying around a picture of his mother that day which Elizabeth had given him, and when they found the body the picture had gone missing. This makes Liz think that the murderer must’ve wanted it. (I think it was in some kind of locket).
Upon receiving this news, Vic becomes distraught and sets to travel to Geneva right away. For a moment it seemed like Clerval would be coming with, which, while it would continue his characterization of being literally the too-perfect friend, would also have been sort of hilarious with its continuation of the idea that he’ll just kind of throw away everything for Vic at a moment’s notice. But no, Vic makes this journey alone.
On the road to Geneva, Vic has several really great melodramatic moments. Several times in particular he screams at nature. “Dear mountains! my own beautiful lake! how do you welcome your wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?” and later he shouts that at an absent William that a storm is his funeral dirge. It reminds me a lot of this list I found online a while back called “how to tell if you’re in a Dostoevsky novel” where one of the entries is “At least once each day you stop in a stairwell to clutch the banister and yell out ‘My God, how loathsome it all is!’”
While at an inn one night in the mountains, Vic thinks he sees his creation in the shadows. The figure quickly disappears but Vic is convinced not only that it was the skaab that he saw, but that his creation is in fact the real murderer of his brother… like, okay? Vic just kinda ignores any and all logistics of this and is like “Yeah, my monster traveled 700 km over mountains, made it to my hometown, murdered my brother and took a picture of my mother away, then traipsed back to around Mont Blanc so that I could see it in the shadows… sounds about right.”
It’s not just that Vic thinks this to himself either. When he gets home he starts telling everyone that he knows who the real murderer is. When his family tells him that Justine has been arrested for it and is being tried that day, he’s distressed that there’s such an apparent miscarriage of justice. “no your honor, my monster from Ingolstadt killed my brother!” Vic is convinced that, because the courts are just, and because Justine is totes innocent, that she’ll get off and then they can set about doing some monster hunting. Of course, I will say that it’s kinda suspicious that some other member of the household staff just happened to find the photo in Justine’s room. Currently I’m suspicious of Justine and this other staff member, but we’ll see where this goes. I don’t think this book will linger here long, as I don’t believe it’s a murder mystery novel.
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