Frankenstein Ch. 18

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FrankensteinCh. 18 23
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Negative Consequences of Human Creation

• Group 3
• Iris, Joyce, Kelly, Renee, Sony, Vivi, Vivien,
  Daisy

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Outline

• Plot
• Frankensteins changes
• Frankensteins decisions
• Monsters change and revenge
• Frankenstein in human society
• Conclusion

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Plot Summary

• Victor travels to England.
• The creation of the female monster.
• Frankenstein thinks about the consequences of
  this new creation.
• Victor destroys the female monster.
• Victor is arrested.
• The death of Clerval.
• The union of Victor and Elizabeth.
• The misinterpretation of the wedding night.

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• Frankensteins Changes

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Frankensteins Changes

• Before the creation of the monster
• 1) Enjoyed nature. (74)
  Clerval
• 2) Passion for pursuing knowledge. (pp. 40, 51)
• 3) Ignored his family while creating the monster.
• After the creation
• 1) Felt antipathy about natural philosophy(158
  164).
• 2) Couldnt calm himself down even he was
  traveling in splendid scenery. (154-55)
• (William Justines death, haunting of
  monster)
• 3) Felt guilty about his family (158).

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• Frankensteins Decisions

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• Why did he promise the monster to make a mate at
  first?
• Victors reservation, Shall I create another
  like yourself, whose joint wickedness might
  desolate the world.(145) You will not
  persevere in the exile (146)
• Victors sympathy , I was moved...but I felt
  that there was some justice in his argument.
  (Page 146) (antipathy 147)
• Monsters promise, If you consent, neither you
  nor any other human being shall ever see us
  again... (Page 146)
• Victors thought , I consent to your demand, on
  your solemn oath to quit Europe for ever, and
  every other place in the neighborhood of man...
  (Page 148)

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• Victors reasons for destroying the mate
• (Page 165)
• The mates disposition
• ...she might become ten thousand times more
  malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own
  sake, in murder and wretchedness.
• ...refuse to comply with a compact made before
  her creation.
• ...might turn with disgust from him to the
  superior beauty of man ...she might quit him...
• The breeding of monsters as a race
• ...a race of devils would be propagated upon the
  earth...
• (concern about others)

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The direct cause of destroying the mate

• Victors misinterpretation
• A ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he
  gazed on me...he had followed me in my travels...
  his countenance expressed the utmost extent of
  malice and treachery. (Page 166)
• Victors madness
• I thought with a sensation of madness on my
  promise of creating another like to him, and
  trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing
  on which I was engaged. (Page 166)

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Questions

• If Frankenstein did not promise the monster to
  make a mate, would the ending change?
• If he did not break his promise to destroy the
  mate, would the monster keep its promise and stay
  away from human being?

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Monsters change and revenge
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Before

• Kindness? When I found that in doing this
  stealing from their storeI inflicted pain on
  the cottagers, I abstained, and satisfied myself
  with berries, nuts, and roots, which I gathered
  from a neighboring wood. (Page 111)
• Intelligence? "My days were spent in close
  attention that I might more speedily master the
  language and I may boast that I improved more
  rapidly than the Arabian, who understood very
  little, and conversed in broken accents, whilst I
  comprehended and could imitate almost every word
  that was spoken.

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• Fond of Helping People? "I remember the first
  time that I did this the young woman, when she
  opened the door in the morning, appeared greatly
  astonished on seeing a great pile of wood on the
  outside. She uttered some words in a loud voice,
  and the youth joined her, who also expressed
  surprise. I observed, with pleasure.
• Interested in Reading and Music? I heard of the
  discovery of the American hemisphere, and wept
  with Safie over the hapless fate of its original
  inhabitants.

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Afterwards it takes revenge through Killing......
Why?
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• Repeatedly Rejected by People
• First Contact with People (106)
• De Laceys (138)
• Girl fell into river (141)
• Pay without reciprocation and Keep Trying Finding
  Solutions
• I ought to have familiarized the old De Lacey to
  me, and by degrees to have discovered myself to
  the rest of his family, when they should have
  been prepared for my approach. But I did not
  believe my errors to be irretrievable and, after
  much consideration, I resolved to return to the
  cottage, seek the old man, and by my
  representations win him to my party. (Page 137)

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Three Rejections the Monsters Responses 1

• De Laceys Felix, we can never again inhabit
  your cottage. The life of my father is in the
  greatest danger, owing to the dreadful
  circumstance that I have related. My wife and my
  sister will never recover their horror. I entreat
  you not to reason with me any more. Take
  possession of your tenement, and let me fly from
  this place. (Page 138)
• ? For the first time the feelings of revenge and
  hatred filled my bosom, I bent my mind towards
  injury and death. When I thought of my
  friends,, these thoughts vanished and a gush of
  tears somewhat soothed me. But again when I
  reflected that they had spurned and deserted me,
  anger returned, a rage of anger, and unable to
  injure anything human, I turned my fury towards
  inanimate objects. (138)

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Three Rejections the Monsters Responses 2

• being shot at with a gun when he tries to
  approach the girl he saves.
• This was then the reward of my benevolence! I
  had saved a human being from destruction, and, as
  a recompense, I now writhed under the miserable
  pain of a wound, which shattered the flesh and
  bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness
  which I had entertained but a few moments before
  gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth.
  Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and
  vengeance to all mankind. (Page 141)

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Three Rejections the Monsters Responses 3

• Seeing William, the monster thinks of educating
  him and turning him into his companion.
• William calls him Hideous monster! and says his
  father will punish him. ? the first victim
• The portrait (143) the monster gazes with
  delight, but then his rage returns.
• Seeing Justines smile, the monster is afraid
  that she will wake up and denounce him. ? The
  thought was madness it stirred the fiend within
  me.(144)

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Hope in having his same Species

• Hope in having his same Species
• I am alone, and miserable man will not
  associate with me but one as deformed and
  horrible as myself would not deny herself to me.
  My companion must be of the same species, and
  have the same defects. This being you must
  create. You must create a female for me, with
  whom I can live in the interchange of those
  sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone
  can do and I demand it of you as a right which
  you must not refuse to concede. (Page 144)

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Rejected by FrankensteinThe Fatal Destruction by
Human BeingsAn Entirely Devastation of Being
Accepted

• I thought with a sensation of madness on my
  promise of creating another like to him, and
  trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing
  on which I was engaged. (Page 166)
• ? the monster a howl of devilish despair and
  revenge
• "You have destroyed the work which you began
  what is it that you intend? Do you dare to break
  your promise? I have endured toil and misery I
  left Switzerland with you I crept along the
  shores of the Rhine, among its willow islands,
  and over the summits of its hills. I have dwelt
  many months in the heaths of England, and among
  the deserts of Scotland. I have endured
  incalculable fatigue, and cold, and hunger do
  you dare destroy my hopes? (Page 167)

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• Mirror Image
• The monster itself
• vs.
• how Frankenstein looks at it

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• The monster hoped that people would accept it
  once they know it does no harm to them
• I persuaded myself that when they should
  become acquainted with my admiration of their
  virtues, they would compassionate me, and
  overlook my personal deformity. (p.130)

• Frankenstein believed it was a devil just as how
  it looks like.
• I produced a depraved wretch, whose delight was
  in carnage and misery (77)
• Shall I create another like yourself, whose
  joint wickedness might desolate the world!
  Begone! I have answered you you may torture me,
  but I will never consent. (p.193)

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• Through reading literature, the monster felt
  itself like Adam in the Paradise Lost
• Desire of its own Eve
• Reason Make me happy, and I shall again be
  virtuous

• Frankenstein took it as devil and never named it.
  
• Frankenstein took this request as the possibility
  from the monster couple to take over humans
  world "Begone! I will not hear you. There can
  be no community between you and me we are
  enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a
  fight, in which one must fall."

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The monster as a murderer

• Two kinds of victims
• A) kill to revenge the whole human race (nothing
  to do with Frankenstein)
• Not I, but she shall suffer the murder I
  have committed because I am for ever robbed of
  all that she could give me, she shall atone. The
  crime had its source in her be hers the
  punishment! Thanks to the lessons of Felix and
  the sanguinary laws of man, I had learned now to
  work mischief. I bent over her, and placed the
  portrait securely in one of the folds of her
  dress. She moved again, and I fled. (p.144)

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• B) kill to revenge Frankenstein
• 1) William
• I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled
  with exultation and hellish triumph clapping my
  hands, I exclaimed, I, too, can create
  desolation my enemy is not invulnerable this
  death will carry despair to him, and a thousand
  other miseries shall torment and destroy him.
  (p.143)
• 2) Clerval-but with pain
• 3) Elizabeth
• But when I discovered that he, the author at
  once of my existence and of its unspeakable
  torments, dared to hope for happiness... I
  recollected my threat and resolved that it should
  be accomplished. (p.220)

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Frankenstein and Human Society
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Frankensteins Family Ties
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Transition

• Monster Shall each man find a wife for his
  bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be
  alone? (pg. 167)
• Hopes for a mate? revenge
• Frankenstein I shuddered to think that the
  future ages might curse me as their pest, whose
  selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own
  peace at the price, perhaps, of the existence of
  the whole human race. (pg. 166)
• Selfish thoughts? considers about humanity
• Dissection of the female monster ?
• I felt as if I had mangled the living flesh
  of a human being. (170)
• I again felt as if I belonged to a race of human
  beings like myself (169)

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The Course of Isolation

• Self-Imposed Mental isolation
• Desires to do the work in solitude and even pass
  his life in solitude.(? a barrier 158 ) ?
  responsibilities 183
• Depressed by negative emotions (181).
• The death of Clerval.
• Physically/Socially isolated
• The sea (pg.169)? warm joy of life (172)
• Frankensteins encounter with the villagers, the
  woman and the physician.(173, 177, 178)
• The judgment and trial. (176, 182)
• The responses of the two magistrates Mr. Kirwin
  p. 177, 200
• (1)(2) ?Parallel to the sufferings of the
  monster.
• ?Frankenstein and the monster are
  inseparable.

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The Completion of Isolation

• The death of Elizabeth and the father
• Frankenstein misinterprets the monsters
  intentions The monster had blinded me to his
  real intentions and when I thought that I had
  prepared only my own death, I hastened that of a
  far dearer victim. (pg. 191)
• ? He underestimates the monsters intelligence.
• ? After destroying the female monster, Victor
  thinks that the monster would directly seek him
  in revenge.

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The Completion of Isolation

• Man! You may hate but beware! Your hours will
  pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will
  fall which must ravish from you your happiness
  forever. (pg. 168)
• Frankensteins decision? deprives the happiness
  of the monster? the monsters revenge? the death
  of two women? Frankenstein isolated.

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Question

• Why does Frankenstein insist on telling Elizabeth
  that he created the monster and the things that
  happened after the creation of monster until the
  second day after their marriage?