Mid-Term Check-In

19 October 2011

Dear Ms. Cline,

So far during this semester I have met with several challenges and had some successes.  My biggest challenge so far has been the process of using primary and secondary texts along with my own analysis.  I have often had to use multiple sources in research papers but the element of analysis as opposed to factual reporting makes the process quite different and challenging for me.  Also, doing close reading and looking deeper into themes and meanings has been something new for me.  I love to read but have rarely been charged with having to find something deeper to it than what was presented at face value.  So far I would say my biggest successes have been in meeting these challenges and forcing myself to grow as a student and a writer.   I now find myself looking at everything I read with a different perspective and a questioning mind.

The readings in this class have been very interesting to me.  The theme of monsters has given me a new outlook on what monsters really represent.  It has become apparent to me that monsters are usually not representative of some external random force put upon by the world, but they are, more often than not, a reflection of our internal workings given shape and form in the external world.

            As far as goals are concerned, my first goal for the second half of this semester is to strengthen my skills with analysis, primarily through the continued use of questioning and close reading of the works I am reading.            My second goal is to become more comfortable with secondary sources and learning how to more easily integrate them into my work.  I hope to continue to improve my writing process along the way.  I have found, especially as this class has progressed, that the less organized methods that I have always used are not as effective for me as they used to be.  I have found that freewriting, outlining and more extensive notetaking are becoming very important for me to organize my thoughts and try to form them into something usable.

            All in all, I have experienced a lot of challenge and growth in this class and expect that it will continue.  I believe that the skills that we are learning will be useful throughout the rest of my schooling and in life as well, and in spite of the stress of having to work outside of what is comfortable, I am glad that I took this class.

Sincerely,

April Chaplin

Essay 3 - VERY Rough Draft

April Chaplin

Cline

ENG 102

15 October 2011

Human Nature as Horror

According to the preface of the Norton Critical Edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the story of Frankenstein came about almost by accident and was meant to be a scary story.  It started out as a contest between several people to produce a story of “sublimity, terror and the unknown” (Hunter, vii).  What ultimately came to be the story of Frankenstein is indeed one of terror, but not in the sense of a scary monster story.  The true horror of Frankenstein is in the illumination of the very real flaws of human nature and how, left unchecked, these flaws can turn to evil and destroy all that is sacred and worth living for.  The three main characters, Walton, Victor Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster, are each very real and sympathetic characters that the reader can easily relate to, their flaws are our flaws, and it is because of this that the story is so fightening. 

Human beings are, by nature, flawed and imperfect, and Shelley brings to light in her characters, some of the most devastating and destructive flaws of mankind. The natural impulse to rebel against ridicule and that which is forbidden is an impulse that both Walton and Frankenstein are guilty of, it is an impulse that feeds something even scarier, blind and all-consuming ambition.  For Frankenstein’s monster, the fatal flaw is vengeance fueled by a heart-wrenching loneliness and rejection that Shelley artfully illustrates in such a way that the reader can’t help but relate to and sympathize with.

Walton’s story is one of a self-educated man fascinated by the sea and exploration.  His fascination is fueled by the contents of his uncle’s library of whose “…volumes were [his] study day and night” (Shelley 8).  Walton learns of his father’s command that he not be allowed to become the explorer that he so desperately wants to be and subverts the desire to become a poet, but on his failure at this task he goes against his father’s wishes and decides to take up his journey.  Walton’s journey is not just a simple exploration, however, it is an expedition driven by the impulse, the ambition and unrelenting need for glory.  He writes to his sister of the “inestimable benefit which [he] shall confer on all mankind to the last generation…” (Shelley 8).  It is not enough for Walton to live a happy, normal life, he wants to be everything to every man and explorer until the end of time, and he cannot stop or rest until he has sacrificed everything good in his life to achieve greatness.  He continues, “…do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose.  My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory…” (Shelley 9).  Not just everyday greatness but a kind of generally unattainable greatness that is nearly the ruin of him and the people around him.  We all secretly long for greatness in our lives, but what sets us apart is not allowing our ambition to control and consume us.  Mary Poovey, in her essay The Lady and the Monster, describes the way that “…Shelley characterizes innate desire…as quintessentially egotistical” (Poovey 253),  how “she sees imagination as an appetite that can and must be regulated-” and how “If it is aroused but is not controlled…, it will project itself into the natural world, becoming voracious in its search for objects to conquer and consume” (Poovey 253).  In the context of the novel Walton’s flaw is scary but he redeems himself by relenting on his mission of glory, by learning from one whose sin is greater, Frankenstein.

Victor Frankenstein embodies all that is destructive and frightening in an unrelenting and egotistical existence bent on ambition and glory.  He too, like Walton, finds the object of his fascination ridiculed and all but forbade by his father.  He describes how his father “looked carelessly at the title-page of my book, and said, ‘Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash” (Shelley 21).    It is this resistance that admittedly propels Frankenstein further and deeper into his imagination and ultimate quest for unparalleled greatness.  He says that had his father taken a different approach to his disapproval and explained his opinion that, “It is even possible, that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin” (Shelley 21).  This is a circumstance that everyone can relate to, how many times has the disapproval of an authority figure lead us to do and pursue exactly that which we have been warned against.

This rebellion is, both in Walton and Frankenstein, however, not the truly frightening part of their nature, it is merely a foreshadowing of the parts of their character, and ours, that is capable of making one shudder.  It is a driving force that pushes them onward into their singular ambition.  As with Walton, Frankenstein is propelled by an innate desire to be great.  He recounts, almost echoing Walton in his sentiments, “…wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!” (Shelley 22).  Again, we see the desire to be everything to all people, to be God-like. His ego and his ambition to be God-like are the most frightening aspect of Frankenstein’s character because they drive him to repeatedly act without regard for consequences.  It is in this single-minded drive and disregard for the natural order of the world that evil is born and evil is true horror.  Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar describe Victor’s transformation and descent into evil,

As his researches into the ‘secrets of nature’ become more feverish, however, and his ambition ‘to explore unknown powers’ grows more intense, Victor begins to metamorphose from Adam to Satan, becoming ‘as Gods’ in his capacity of ‘bestowing animation upon lifeless matter’…(Gilbert and Gubar 231).

His ambition and consequent descent into evil is so horrifying because it illustrates the cost of surrendering to human impulses and ego.  George Levine puts it simply, “what Frankenstein’s ambition costs him is the family connection which makes life humanely possible” (Levine 213).

Without family and social connections, life becomes a desolate and agonizingly lonely proposition.  When you add the pain of rejection, especially by one’s own parent you get what is perhaps the scariest insight into evil and flawed human nature that Shelley provides in this book, that of Frankenstein’s creation. Shelley imparts to the reader the horror of the monster, not in his external ugliness, “a figure hideously deformed and loathsome” (Shelley 80) and not even in his fiendish and murderous deeds but rather in his character.  Shelley creates a being so sympathetic that nearly everyone who reads it can relate.  The creature tells his maker, “Every where I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.  I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend” (Shelley 66).  All he wants in his existence is companionship and happiness, the same things that we all want.  It is only when he is denied this opportunity that he descends into a vengeful evil that seeks to destroy and to inflict the same misery he suffers upon the one whom he sees as having inflicted it upon him.   Poovey describes the moment of that the monster realizes he  will not, by conventional means, get what he wants and surrenders to his inherent  monstrousness,

Their violent reaction, which the monster interprets as rejection by its ‘adopted

family,’ at last precipitates the creature’s innate nature; abandoning humanity’s

‘godlike science’…the monster embarks on its systematic destruction of domestic

Harmony. (Poovey 259).

This is a very natural human response and one that is inherently ugly, terrifying and hard to face.

As a gothic novel, Frankenstein’s purpose, and Mary Shelley’s intention, was for it to be the “kind of ghost story that would ‘curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart’(Moers 215).  There is no doubt that she succeeded, but she did so less by the telling of a story about a monster than the telling of a story of monstrousness; the innate monstrousness that resides in all humans and when allowed to run rampant, becomes ugly and evil and truly terrifying.  George Levine, in his criticism of Frankenstein states that “…as Nelson suggests, reader and writer alike were freed to pursue the possibilities of their own potential evil” (Levine 209).  As this quote suggests, it is the very recognition of the qualities that reside in each of us and the freedom that Shelley’s story gives us to explore these qualities, both in the book and in ourselves, that makes it such a scary story.

Works Cited

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Gubar, Susan.  “Mary Shelley’s Monstrous Eve.”

Frankenstein, The 1818 Text,Contexts, Nineteenth-century Responses, Modern Criticism. Ed. J. Paul Hunter. W W Norton & Co Inc, 1996. 225-240. Print.

Levine, George.  “Frankenstein and the Tradition of Realism.” Frankenstein,The

1818 Text,Contexts, Nineteenth-century Responses, Modern Criticism. Ed. J. Paul Hunter. W W Norton & Co Inc, 1996. 241-251. Print.

Moers, Ellen.  “Female Gothic:The Monster’s Mother.” Frankenstein,The 1818 Text,

Contexts, Nineteenth-century Responses, Modern Criticism. Ed. J. Paul Hunter. W W Norton & Co Inc, 1996. 241-251. Print.

Poovey, Mary.  “’My Hideous Progeny’: The Lady and the Monster.”

Frankenstein,The 1818 Text,Contexts, Nineteenth-century Responses, Modern Criticism. Ed. J. Paul Hunter. W W Norton & Co Inc, 1996. 251-261. Print.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, The 1818 Text,

Contexts, Nineteenth-century Responses, Modern Criticism. Ed. J. Paul Hunter. W W Norton & Co Inc, 1996. Print.

Female Gothic: The Monster's Mother

The article “Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother,” was written in 1976 by Ellen Moers, a literary critic who wrote about female literature.  In the article, Moers describes the female gothic genre as it was before Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein and how Shelley changed the genre.  Before Frankenstein, the genre always centered around a female victim/heroine.  When Shelley wrote Frankenstein, one of the things that made it unique and important was the distinct lack of such a female heroine.  According to Moers, the fact that the book was written by a woman yet has no major female character was genre changing.  Moers goes on to talk about Shelley’s life history and how influential that was on her writing.  She talks about how life and death, beginning from her own birth and the consequent death of her mother shaped Mary Shelley’s vision and thoughts. Moers goes on to demonstrate how the overriding themes of birth and death in Shelley’s life are quite astonishingly mirrored in the novel.  Moers ends with a discussion and analyses of another recurrent theme in the book, that of parent child relationships and dynamics.

My response to this article, in particular, was very strong.   It made the most sense to me and gave me a whole new perspective of Frankenstein and also shedding some light on at least one thing about Frankenstein that bothered me.  The whole idea and importance of giving birth in the book somehow eluded me, but after reading Moers article it is remarkably clear to me.  In addition, the one scene that disturbed me the most in the book was how after laboring furiously for months over his creation, Frankenstein finally infuses life into his monster only to run away from it and pretend it doesn’t exist for years.  He then is horrified that it has come back to haunt him.  This was something that bothered me immensely and I was not able to pinpoint why.  After reading this article and how Moers analysed “the parent-child and child-parent relationship” I had an ah-ha moment and suddenly looked at Frankenstein in a whole new way.   I do think that I will somehow incorporate this article into my third essay.

Image Source <http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/literary-women-ellen-moers/1003725030>

Writing and Revision

As far as a writing process goes, mine is not the most structured.  I have a very difficult time sitting down and forcing something down on paper, especially if it is anything but factual or research based.   I find that I rely heavily on inspiration or intuition.  If I overthink a topic or try to force it, it rarely comes to me.  So, the first and main thing I try to do is read and reread the assignment.  I make sure the idea of what I need to do is planted firmly in my mind, then I walk away.  Over the next few days, I try to think about the assignment and the material periodically, and usually, if I’m lucky, and when I’m not thinking about it, an idea comes to me.  After the idea comes I am able to sit down and start fleshing out something resembling a paper.

When it comes to revision I try to get at least two academic opinions and at least one opinion from a friend or confidant.  I keep those suggestions in mind as I reread my essay.  The things I look for most, myself, when revising an essay are coherence and flow.  Does it make sense?  Does it flow smoothly through all the points and ideas I wanted to make?  I look for things that may be unclear or superfluous then I try to tighten it up by getting rid of unnecessary things and rearranging where necessary to make everything as smooth as possible.  For me, the benefit of revising a paper is simply to make it more clearly the expression of ideas that it was meant to be and a paper that engages the reader.

For essay #2 I am still in process so I don’t have totally specific examples yet.  I want to reevaluate my thesis and try to make it clearer, and then make sure that I have tied my paragraphs neatly to it.  Since analysis is new for me, I will be looking hard at whether I have satisfied the P.I.E. format for each of my statements and eliminating any extra or unclear information. 

image source: http://girlfriendbooks.blogspot.com/2011/08/by-laura-spinella-topic-this-cycle-is.html

Frankenstein Blog #5

“Of what a strange nature is knowledge!  It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock.  I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling; but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death…” (Shelley 81).

            This quote is of Frankenstein’s monster as he is telling his tale to his creator in volume 2.  It seemed particularly poignant to me because it seems to echo the mindset of many of the characters in the story so far.  The overriding message of this statement is that ignorance is bliss.  Everyone seeks out and even yearns for knowledge, but once it is had, it cannot be shaken, “It clings to the mind…” (81). If the knowledge that one gains is unexpected or undesirable it causes unimaginable misery.  This is especially true in the case of Victor Frankenstein and his monster. 

            For Victor, ignorance allows him to go on about his life for more than 2 years after creating this “wretch” without giving much of a thought to what happened to it.  It is only when he comes across the figure of his creation after the death of his brother that he realizes, and comes to know, that it is ultimately his fault that his brother has been murdered.  Furthermore, knowing that a dear friend has been executed because of what he has done is knowledge that is so unbearable that he cannot shake it or the misery that this knowledge brings him.

            For Frankenstein’s monster being alive is full of mystery and awe.  He begins his life and journey completely ignorant of who he is, what he is, or where he came from.  In spite of his lack of knowledge he believes that the world is an amazing place and that the people in it are essentially good and benevolent creatures like himself.  He yearns to acquire the knowledge to be among people and to know who he is.  After a year of observing the world, the monster presents himself, and in so doing, loses the last bit of happiness that ignorance affords him.  He learns that he is, no matter how hard he tries, nothing but a hideous monster that will never be able to be accepted among people.  This knowledge and final obliteration of blissful ignorance is what causes the untold misery that cannot be shaken and makes him long for death to relieve it.

           Image source: http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/0/4/5/2/3/0/5/Ignorance-is-bliss-38440156948.jpeg

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and J. Paul Hunter. Frankenstein,

The 1818 Text, Contexts, Nineteenth-century Responses, Modern Criticism. W W Norton & Co Inc, 1996. Print.

First Draft Essay 2

My questions are:  Is my interpretation believable?  Did I present it clearly and support it in a way that is easy and smooth to follow?  Did I lapse into summary anywhere? Any suggestions at all are welcome! 

April Chaplin

Cline

ENG 102

17 September 2011

Facing Down Your Demons

            “Goblin Market,” a poem by Christina Rosetti, is, on its surface, a tale of fanciful fairy tale qualities, dancing little goblin men and one sister’s love for another.  However, when examined more closely, the vivid imagery that the poet uses speaks to a theme of temptation and personal demons.  The story illustrates the consequences of giving into temptation and the ultimate salvation that can only come from facing down one’s fears and demons.  The sisters, Laura and Lizzie, demonstrate this dynamic through their choices and ways of handling the temptations they are faced with.

            As the poem begins the reader is immediately introduced to the goblin men and their cries urging anyone that can hear them to “Come buy our orchard fruits, / Come buy, come buy:” (Rosetti line 3-4).  The description of the unearthly wares that follows is so clear and vivid as to be almost palpable.  She describes “grapes fresh from the vine” (line 20) and “Bright-fire-like barberries” (line 27), all “Sweet to tongue and sound to eye” (line 30).  How tempting such wonderful things must be to young maidens like Laura and Lizzie.  Indeed these fruits are exactly that, indescribable temptation presented for the taking by these little goblin men. 

            Then we have the villains of the story, the goblin men.  Rosetti uses images of strange, animal-like and somewhat scary little monsters to describe them.

            One had a cat’s face,

            One whisk’d a tail,

            One tramp’d at a rat’s pace,

            One crawl’d like a snail,

            One like a wombat prowl’d obtuse and furry,

            One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry. (line 71-76)

In our mind’s eye now are planted these images of little monsters slithering and crawling through the glen, yet in spite of the slight revulsion that the reader can’t help but feel, it is tempered by their sweet voices described as “…a voice like the voice of doves / Cooing all together: / They sounded kind and full of loves” (line 77-79). Beasts with voices of angels.  These are the scary dark imaginings of our inner workings, creatures that intrigue yet repulse us deep down, our inner demons. It is these inner demons whose mere presence or faces repulses, but whose voice tricks us, entices us and leads us directly into temptation. 

It is the sweet voice of our monsters that gets us into trouble. The voice that when you close your eyes, makes you forget exactly what it is that you’re dealing with, the way that Laura does when she fails to heed her sister’s dire warnings and gives into to the little goblin men and ultimately temptation.  Lizzie warns Laura, saying, “…’No, no, no; / Their offers should not charm us, / Their evil gifts would harm us’” (line 64-67).  Lizzie knows that no matter how fantastic the offers, one must be strong and not look into the face of demons because the temptation they offer can do nothing but harm.

Laura does not hear her sister and instead follows the path of least resistance and finds the consequences are heavy and hard to bear.  These consequences begin from the very moment she gives in and decides to partake of the ‘forbidden fruit’.  “She clipp’d a precious golden lock, / She dropped a tear more rare than a pearl,” (line 126-127).  The price of giving in and being weak of will is already enough here for Laura to shed a tear, yet it is still not enough for her to stop; she continues on and gorges herself on the fruit of the goblins. 

As the story goes on, the author continues to use vivid imagery and language to impart to the reader the pain and price that Laura pays for her transgression.  Phrases like, “Laura turn’d cold as stone” (line 253) and “In sullen silence of exceeding pain” (line 271) are precursors to the description of ultimate consequence. 

Her hair grew thin and grey;

She dwindled away, as the fair full moon doth turn

To swift decay and burn

Her fire away. (line 277-280)

The author can only be describing one thing here, the ultimate price of Laura’s failure to resist temptation, which is her soul and her life.  She failed to confront her demons and now she must pay the price for it.

            On the other side of temptation is resistance and salvation.  Lizzie’s journey into the belly of the beast to confront her demons illustrates this point.  In spite of her fear she seeks out the goblins with the strength of will to withstand everything they throw at her.        

“Though the goblins cuff’d and caught her, / Coax’d and fought her, / Bullied and besought her,” (line 424-426).  These lines show how in spite of all of their charms the goblins could not tempt her and were forced to resort to brutish behavior to force their wares upon Lizzie.  And still, her strength prevails.  “Life out of death” (line 524) is the reward for her resistance.  Salvation, for both herself and her sister. 

            In life, and in this poem, there are choices.  The story of two sisters, Lizzie and Laura, is a poignant story of the effects of our choices and a reminder to be mindful of the consequences they may have.  You can choose as Laura did, to give in to temptation and your personal demons and you will nearly always find that, “Their fruits [are] like honey to the throat / But poison in the blood” (line 554-555).  Or, you can take the chance and resist, stand up in the face of your fears and the monsters that haunt you and reap the rewards.

Works Cited

Rosetti, Christina.  “Goblin Market.” Goblin Market and other Poems. Cambridge: Macmillan, 1862. Print.

My Early Reaction to Goblin Market

The poem that I reacted to most was “Goblin Market” by Christina Rosetti.  At first read it was the vivid imagery and fairy tale quality that I liked.  The idea of little ‘goblin men’ dancing through the glen enticing young maidens to buy their fruits is a fanciful story, but one that the speaker tells skillfully.  The meter and language were fairly easy to follow and do a good job of lulling the reader into the rhythm of the story, a rhythm that changes throughout, becoming more subdued in some places and more intense in others, all of which mesh and flow with what’s going on at that point in the poem. By the end of the poem it is easy to see that the story can be interpreted as a story of how one sister’s love can ultimately save the other sister’s life. After all, Lizzie braves an encounter with the goblin men to bring back the juices and pulp of their fruit to save her sister Laura.  However, after reading the poem more closely I see a story of temptation and the devastation that blindly giving into it can create in one’s life, and, on the other side of the coin, how having the personal strength to resist can bring salvation and empowerment.

From the very beginning temptation is a theme.  The speaker describes how the goblin men cry, “Come buy our orchard fruits, / Come buy, come buy:” (line 3-4).  The images of all the perfect and varied fruit that one could not possibly find anywhere else follows in such a way that you can almost see in your mind’s eye these perfect, ripe and delicious specimens.  The goblins sing their song of “grapes fresh from the vine” (20) and “Bright-fire-like barberries” (27) in such a way that you can almost taste them and indeed want to.   

From here, it is easy to understand how difficult it would be for someone like Laura, utterly lacking willpower, to resist such charm and seduction in spite of her sister’s dire warnings. 

“We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:

Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?”(42-45)

Here Lizzie tries to warn her sister of the dangers of giving in to the goblin men because what they offer can’t possibly be natural.  The idea being that anything unnatural cannot be good and most surely has undesirable consequences and effects no matter how good it seems at first.

The poem continues, on and on, vividly depicting how one person can blindly give in to such seduction at the price of one’s soul.  It is not until this temptation is met with such strength and the will to not give in, that the power is defeated, never to be anything but a memory again. 

This is a poem and a story that affected me strongly because I see in it parallels of personal power, of starting with a lack of it and only through the near destruction of one’s own soul coming to find that power and happiness is within oneself.

Image source: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2009/09/garden-goblins.html

Works Cited

Rosetti, Christina.  “Goblin Market.” Goblin Market and other Poems. Cambridge: Macmillan, 1862.