Tainted Beauty

Anna Burress
English 101
Writing Assignment #2

Tainted Beauty

I pledge that I have abided by the WC Honor Code.

Mary Shelley, author of the classic novel Frankenstein, uses the literally device of intertextuality to convey multifaceted meaning in pivotal points of her story. One great example worth analyzing can be found in Chapter 10, when Shelley inserts an excerpt from the poem, “Mutability” by her husband Percy Shelley. Though the inclusion of this text,
Within this place in the novel, Victor Frankenstein has awoken surrounded by nature and is walking through a forest, alone. The bulk of this chapter is dedicated to the internal monologue Victor goes through while experiencing his surroundings with all of his senses. As he walks, he is overcome by the idea of how small people really are compared to the grandeur of the trees in the forest, the rain, and the wind.
Very abruptly, the reader enters a passage from Mutability. There is no introduction or happenstance behind its insertion in this moment in the novel. This is significant because it shows that Shelley wanted the message of the poem to blend in with her own narrative of Victor’s internal monologue. The reader could take this poem as something that Victor is thinking as he walks through the forest.
Another thing worth noticing here is the author of the poem is Shelley’s husband. The question arises of whether or not Shelley uses her husband’s work for its quality or for the mere benefit of aiding him in gaining exposure. The answer can be found in whether or not her excerpt benefits her narrative.
By including this section of Mutuality, Shelley’s narrative on Victor’s thoughts about human development is strengthened. While Victor walks, his surroundings force him to think about how nature can be both beautiful and destructive. In section 3 it says,

The path, as you ascend higher, is intersected by ravines of snow, down which stones continually roll from above; one of them is particularly dangerous, as the slightest sound, such as speaking in a loud voice, produces a concussion of air sufficient to draw destruction upon the head of the speaker.

Here, the reader is introduced to a natural sight commonly associated with romantic thoughts of beauty. When thinking of ravines of snow, many readers may associate the description to something similar to a Christmas card scene. But as the description progresses, the path is described as treacherous to someone climbing it. The words, “concussion” and “destruction” hold the connotation of a much darker scene.
The following section of Mutability that Mary Shelley utilizes is imperative to the mood of Chapter 10:
We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.
We rise; one wand’ring thought pollutes the day.
We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;
It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free.
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but mutability!

In Mutability, Percy Shelley analyses how natural thought that allows humans to experience beautiful things can also be destructive. The comparison of beauty and joy with destruction and darkness is brought up again. The first two lines show how dreams and thoughts –instruments humans have to experience positive things- can easily be dangerous and bring about negativity. Also, like the natural scene described above, even human thought temporary, always changing. “Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;” describes this. And as Victor walks, his surroundings are always changing, for every step may never give the same view as his last.
On a deeper level, this scene can be connected to the theme of humanity and creation in Frankenstein. Victor is internally conflicted with his decision to create a monster. When first describing his craft, he used words evoking a connotation of beauty, yet upon viewing his creation in full, he realized how grotesque his monster turned out. Just like the snowy ravine Victor trudges through, and the the dreams that poison Percy Shelley’s sleep, the beauty of creation is also tainted by darker forces in Frankenstein. The narrative of Chapter 10 wouldn’t be the same without including the excerpt from Mutability. The theme of tainted beauty is present throughout the novel, and shows underlying importance by presenting intertextual meaning through Mutability.

Works Cited
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Maurice Hindle. London: Penguin Books, 2003.

The (More Than) Horror Novel

This week while finishing Frankenstein, I made an effort to take some notes while reading. I noticed that there is something unique in the way that Shelley presents her narration. While it isn’t completely uncommon to read a novel of this length with multiple narrators, I think the relationship that Shelley presents between the narrators is something a reader doesn’t come by too often. In modern literature, the complexities that guide the story are mostly action-based, but here we see that plot mostly progresses on a character-based level. As Frankensteins monster observes and grows mentally (based on how he sees humans act), the plot turns to the issue of a companion for him. Here, I don’t think Shelley is merely padding her novel with multiple plots. I think her aim is for the reader to see different sides to the situation, based on who is telling the story.

Another complexity of this more-than-horror-novel that I found compelling was the off shoot of the Frankenstein franchise. As you may know, there have been many movies, plays, novels, and even comics made off of the story of Frankensteins monster. One of the earliest examples of this include the sequel to the first Frankenstein movie, The Bride of Frankenstein. In this, the writers took the idea of a female companion to Frankenstein and rewrote the plot so that Victor doesn’t terminate her development.

My question is, how would Mary Shelley feel about this? And to build on that, how would she feel in general about her story going so mainstream? Some may even argue that the original literature that she produced has been exploited by the mass media. Would Shelley be angry that some many outlets of media have altered the story that she originally created? I feel that there should be some sort of boundary, because when does the story become (essentially) not hers? Connecting back to the Harry Potter series, I know that JK Rowling has always played a part in the film adaptation of her novels. She has overseen the screenwriting and the casting, and given her input about what is important to include and what is okay to leave out or alter. After finishing FFrankenstein the novel, I wonder how Shelley let the media get away with skewing her story so much. All the emotion and backstory behind the monster has never been apparent to me as a consumer, and I know I’m not alone in this. Maybe the answer is as simple as the fact that copyright laws weren’t the same then as they are now, but on a deeper level, Shelley must’ve had some sort of connection with her work to not let the complexities fall by the wayside as much as they did.

In any case, her monster’s popularity can only be challenged by Dracula. So I guess she wasn’t completely careless to let the media take hold as fiercely as it did.

It Was Simply Out of His Hands.

I really wish this post to my blog wasn’t so delayed. Living in a time as technologically advanced as this, homework such as this should be a breeze to do, thanks to the connivence of it. Despite this, Frankenstein has taken me a substantial amount of time to get caught up on, and as a result, it is now Tuesday night and I am finally getting my thoughts worked out.

Immediately upon picking up this book, I expected the overdone, single-facetted tale of Frankenstein I’ve been hearing about since my first grade Halloween party. What I found instead was refreshing. The first five chapters or so detail Victor Frankenstein’s upbringing, where there seems to be a significant age difference between his mom and dad, and a weird (possibly incestual) relationship with a girl named Elizabeth that is referred to as his cousin. On the slightly less awkward side, Victor shows interest early on in life in the natural community and the wonders of life and our surroundings. This brings him to study at a university, where he then creates his monster. By this point, his mother has passed (something I think that effected his interest in life and resurrection). Victor then falls ill, and the monster leaves his life for the time being. An unfortunate turn of events leaves Victors younger brother murdered and an old family friend, Justine, accused and hung. All while this is happening, Victor is confused and guilty about the monster he has created. Farther into the novel, we find the Frankenstien family on vacation, where Victor is reunited with his monster. It is then that the reader discovers the monster’s journey to become a functioning being who talks and eats.

This summary is no doubt brief, but the most important thing that I’ve taken away so far is how unexpected the portrayal of the monster was. In every version of Frankenstein, the monster is always mute. And although he may acquire sentiment and awareness of humanity, these feelings always seem very elementary. In this novel, the original, it is as though the monster is less frightening to me, and more pity-able. It is almost as though he is an unfortunate product of his circumstance. I think there was obviously something internally going wrong in Victor’s head for him to get the notion to mess with the cycle of life. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if it’s for the sake of science, resurrection is still wrong. Maybe it had something to do with his mom dying, but creating a monster is no way to reconcile that. Now it seems as though Frankenstein is just trying to get by the best he can.

In any case, I guess Mary Shelley had to come up with some sort of monster for her ghost story contest, so no matter what, Frankenstein was going to be created. Even if it is morally wrong.

Really quick, the Harry Potter nerd inside of me can’t help but draw a couple connections to Frankenstein. I am currently in the middle of the section where the monster explains his life thus far, and I keep thinking about how in HP 5 (I think it is?) Hagrid goes to see the giants and is explaining his journey to Harry, Ron, and Hermione. The first person narrative is very similar, as is the characters of Hagrid and the monster. They are both looked at as outsiders to their community. Also, just the idea of reading a book about monsters reminds me of the ‘Monster Book’ Hagrid assigns his students at Hogwarts. I guess the difference lies in the fact that their monster book functions as an actual monster that can bite you, while ours is just about a monster. Anyway, that was an unnecessary tangent, but I felt that it had to be said.

Out Loud

Here’s my essay!

I pledge my honor that I have completed this work in accordance with the Honor Code.

Self Reflection: In this assignment, I have worked on my skills to write autobiographically, as opposed to writing responding to research. I need to work on structuring my work more effectively.

Out Loud

Birkerts’ idea of reading can be classified as a very private matter. His opinion on reading has been shaped through his early experiences with reading, just as mine has. The difference between the two of us is that I believe that public exposure of reading and writing can have a few benefits: it can connect readers together to grow in their knowledge, it can spread ideas across the world, making better writers and readers, and it can spark interest in rhetorical things, like theatre.
When I think of my first encounters with reading, I’m immediately drawn to first grade. My teacher sent out weekly lists of words we would have to learn for homework. At the start of every week, she’d pass out these blue squares of paper with around twenty words on them. We’d get our glue out and paste them into our black and white notebooks, which would later be cracked open once again, later that afternoon when I got home from school.
Upon picking me up from day care and starting dinner, my dad would sit me down on the couch and begin that night’s battle of teaching me to read. I admire my dad for trying his hardest to sit by me night after night… after night while I mispronounced words like “around” and “eleven.” He was a great coach in the process of learning what each letter sounded like and how they all fit together. But despite this, my memories of this time are flogged with fidgeting and frustration. I distinctly remember sitting on our deep green couches, my feet swinging too and fro, my hands clenching the cushions, just aching to know all of the words on my blue list so I could go and play with my neighbor, Reed. The truth was, I had a lot of trouble learning to read. I could go over a blue list for three nights in a row and the words would still look alien to me. Those blue lists were my enemy and I desperately wanted to leave them behind me.
About halfway through the year I remember getting demoted from the Red Group to the Blue Group. After letting go of the initial thought that my life was over, I realized I just needed a new strategy to learning how to read. Soon, my dad and I were sitting in our living room, on the very same green couches that once gave me pleanty of anxiety, yelling my blue list words and making songs out of them. If I could hear them and say them, and play with the way they sounded, I could learn them! And it felt great!
I was soon bumped back up to my Red Group status and life was good again. From there, I explored reading like any other kid would explore the bottom of his or her sandbox. I knew there was more to find in books, and we always had a pretty constant, positive relationship.
Later on, around middle school, I discovered theatre and fell in love. I loved performing and loved the challege of perfecting that craft. The rush of having all eyes on you, as you leave all you have on stage… it’s addicting. From this point on, I engrossed myself in theatre. I read, saw, and did as much theatre as possible. But to get better, I knew I would have to be educated.
In high school, I took speech class and was always looking for the next, coolest playwright. Tina Howe, Christopher Durang, and David Ives fascinated me. They wrote with such understanding of literature transformed into spoken word. I listened to a lot of public radio and podcasting, interested in this thing called an essay. It was nothing like what I wrote or read in school. I was compelling and entertaining. The authors read them aloud and they were funny! They performed, they wrote, and they read… and they were cool! Walking home from school in ninth grade meant one of three things were coming out of my iPod: Mugglecast (a podcast based around the Harry Potter series, another one of my reading obsessions), This American Life (a podcast where essay writer David Sedaris was frequently featured), or The Moth Podcast (a podcast in which people read they’re own essays).
Who knew listening to this writing would be so fun? The connection between writing and reading has always been a public thing for me. I connect reading to a way to reach out to people. I enjoy listening to the critical theorists of the Harry Potter fan-base, as well as the theatre that can be found in readings of many essay writers. I encourage others to seek out these things because I honestly think reading should be part of a network.
Because my underlying connection with reading and writing is founded on the public relationship this form of communication connects with, I doubt Birkerts would agree with my justification. To him, reading is all about the internal experience. The adventure should take place inside oneself, where a spiritual connection can take place. Reading and writing should be a personal experience in which the participant is enriched by not only the text but the feelings evoked from the text.
While I can see where Birkerts is coming from and recognize the benefits of reading in a personal environment, I can’t help but also see the benefits of public reading and writing. Without communication, beautiful works of writing would never be shared. Without the added experience one gets from verbal expression, I would’ve never been as drawn to works of writing as I am now.
There is value in the connecting force of literature. Reading should be more than an internal pleasure. I can see how this experience is special and different, but that doesn’t negate the experience of a public form of reading. Some people don’t have the patience or drive to sit and read in private. Should they be punished for this, or should they embrace the activity that can surround reading and writing? I say the latter.
Without public exposure of reading and writing, people would never be able to share ideas. Without the benefit of sharing ideas, reading and writing wouldn’t ever evolve they way it has. I have connected with reading and writing through theatre and the spoken word, and without this, I would be a very different person.

Birkerts, a Hipster for his own generation.

The impression that Birkerts leaves on me after reading chapter 2 of The Gutenberg Elegies is one of a growing young adult I know very well. The second chapter of this book focuses on his early experiences with writing. Early on, the reader learns of his father’s negative outlook on young boys reading. Birkerts then explains how reading in private transformed into his fascination with the written word. From then on, his life seems to be shaped completely around the writings of Kerouac, Hesse, Miller, Lermontov, and Hemingway.

This chapter was a particularly long one, and I feel as though any short summary wouldn’t do it complete justice. To get the full affect of Birkert’s obsession with books, writers, and the image of a well-read intellectual, one must read the text in full.

In any case, I can’t help but find an uncanny resemblance in character between Birkerts and a good friend of mine. For the sake of privacy, we’ll call him Kevin. Kevin not only comes from the same region of Michigan as Birkert, but he shares the same sort of lust for the alternative that Birkerts has growing up. In explaining his teen years, Birkerts says,

I was already picking up advance vibrations of what would soon emerge full-blown as the counter-culture, I listened to Bob Dylan and the Kinks, kept my ear glued to Detriot’s new FM stations…. I was chafing at partental restrictions…”

Teen rebellion can be found in any point in history, but I find that the emerging trend toward the alternative culture presently referred to as “hipster” is very similar to the movement of Dylan listeners and Emerson readers of Birkert’s generation. Like this writer, my close friend Kevin is drawn to the pull of the intellectual image. He too, strives to seem worldly by emgrossing himself in expression that follows a path less mainstream than the Northface-wearing, Lady Gaga-listening popular culture of today.

I guess this connection leaves me a little sympathetic to the crazed-fascination of Birkerts. He too has fallen victim to the predictable trend of teen rebellion. Frustrated by the confines of his present surroundings, he reaches out, finding solace and exploration in the creative exploits of those Transcendentalists. But it’s more than that. This yearning for something with substance turns into a desire for the next, most obscure thing. Unfortunately, it seems as though Birkerts shares the undesirable habit of name dropping. Constantly throughout
this chapter, Birkerts just brings up names of authors (ie: Hemingway, Wolfe, Flemming, W.E.B. Du Bois) for what I think, is just for effect. He wants us to perceive him as worldly and well-read. Although he is successful in generating this effect, there isn’t much explanation. As with my friend Kevin, by bringing up his newest favorite music compilation or ex-convict, heroin addict-turned author. But then again, I guess he had to read it to tell me how “totally heinous” his adjective use is.

I can sit and read, too.

When I sat down to write this tonight, I realized something pretty significant. I should’ve had my blog open while I read so I could comment as I read. In my GRW class last semester, I used this strategy to get my responses out as they occurred to me within reading and it really helped me understand my method of thinking about the text at hand. Nevertheless, I obviously didn’t have my blog open while I read, so I’m now in the process of flipping through and re-realizing my thoughts.

I guess the first order of business is to explain what exactly I’m reading. To be brief, it looks at though The Gutenburg Elegies consists of a series of essays complaining about how modern technology is straining the beauty and practice of writing and reading. Birkerts seems to be throughly distraught with the way society treats this ancient tradition of idea-sharing. He recognizes that others might take him for being overly-nostalgic, and in this is where I first began to relate to him. I’ve always been a nostalgic individual, crying at graduation and staying contact with friends I’ve known since kindergarten, and relishing in the traditional tuna-sandwich-on-the-carpet-floor-on-Christmas Eve. I understand his “What ever happen to…?” ideal.

I also respect him for attempting to go back to the bare basics of life. He says,

I have also tried working myself back gradually from present to past, peeling off the layers one by one; taking away televisions and telephones (all things “tele”), airplanes, cars, plastics, synthetic fibers, efficient sanitation, asphalt, wristwatches, and ballpoint pens, and on and on.”

Take out the “efficient sanitation” part, and I feel like this is something I would really like to do with my life. I think there is something purifying in stripping away our conveniences. Someone who can stay with this sort of endeavor deserves a significant amount of respect, in my book.

I also can see his bigger point in applying this “purification” to the written word.

Two summers ago, I got the opportunity to tour Scotland and England with a group from my high school. I jumped at the chance, souly due to the fact that the tour included a stay in Edinburgh, the hometown of JK Rowling. The Harry Potter fanatic inside me was determined to make it overseas, no matter how many fundraisers it was going to take. And I did it. I made it over. And whilst there, I indulged in the kind of literary experience Birkerts would be proud of. I sat in the Elephant Room –the homey cafe where JK Rowling wrote much of the Harry Potter series– and read Sorcerer’s Stone. I turned each page with giddy excitement radiating from my very center. I was at peace with myself and totally surounded with another world.

I think Birkerts would appreciate this. Despite that Harry Potter has most defiantly contributed to the commerciality of the written word, with my experience that didn’t matter. It was very matter of fact. I enjoyed my book. My book which was written on paper and bound. Not my Kindle copy of Harry Potter, or the book on tape I bought off audible.com and loaded onto my iPod… but my book.

There is obviously much more to explore within Birkert’s arguement. I am concerned with his idea that

attention spans have shrunk and fragmented– the dawning of the age of ADD

and I also think that technology can further progress writing and reading if we move beyond the lateral– and frankly, shallow, in my opinion– practices of writing that our society uses. But both of these themes will take much more time and space. And right now, I kind of like the simplicity of this blog entry. Birkerts thinks the act of reading should be simply that. Sitting down to read and enjoy. And writing this blog entry was simply that. I sat down to write it and enjoy.