Coursework Ideas

I  have thought about focusing on the use of symbolism and how they create meanings in many ways for the reader, also to show whether the use of symbolism is useful in my chosen text. Taking a critical approach I will show how my text may lack symbolism or how symbolism could be portrayed in a better way.

So far my idea for my Critical coursework text is the Poem of Fra Lippo Lippi. The text studied at AS lit came to mind as it shows the symbolism and importance of art as well as the stability of society. Based on the Florentine Monk living in the 15th century will also enable me to explore theories of Marxism, Functionalism and Feminism which can also help provide explanations for how the poem can be critically analysed. If I do focus on symbolism I could explore should art be realistic and true to life or should it be idealistic and didactic? this thought is highlighted a lot throughout the poem.

Chapter 9-Chapter 10
The death of Justine, we see how Frankenstein quickly changes the tense to forget what his creation had done to his family 'Justine's died; she rested'.

• 'The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart'. Frankensteins worries become almost untangled, the heat has come of his shoulders and the intense atmosphere of Justine's trial. The use of personification emphasis the guilt and pain he truly feels.
• Frankensteins character is shown again 'self-satisfaction'.
• 'I was now free' questions the reader what is he free from? the past is always going to haunt him, Frankenstein is aware of the past coming back.
• page 73- 'I was encompassed ...type of me' describes a reflection of himself the things he has done.
• also on page 73 Shelly's use of pathetic fallacy after the Mountain and surrounding echos the mood of guilt and remorse, though its used throughout the novel.
• the ending of chapter nine shows how Frankenstein has almost found peace with nature which he connects best with. 'sleep crept over me' suggests a new story of the past coming upon him. Or sleep can be seen as a world for him of unconscious desires which are repressed, in which his imaginations are achievable.

The natural world has effects on victor's mood: the beauty of nature enlightens his character. Though nature makes him joyful it also bring him the feelings of regret, guilt and shame. 'The rain depressed me; my old feeling recurred, and i was miserable'. The significance of the connection to nature is purely based upon the creation of the monster. The monster becomes a symbol of Victors madness in trying to emulate the natural forces of his creation.


We see how the monster becomes a verbal and emotional almost human like creature that communicates his past to victor, this gives Victor a fuller understanding of how his creation, now we see the intellect behind the creature. We see how the monster understands his position in the world, and the abandonment by Frankenstein he now seeks revenge. For the first time Frankenstein realises what he has actually made, the creature has needs and demands which are out of control. We see the natural side of the monster, one way in which the monster shows eloquence is similar to the novel Paradise Lost - when the monster tries to convince Victor to listen to his story. “remember, that I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel.” By comparing Victor to God, the monster heaps responsibility for his evil actions upon Victor, scolding him for his neglectful failure to provide a nourishing environment.


Chapter 11-Chapter 12


Chapter 11 summary- Sitting by the fire in his hut, the monster tells Victor of the confusion that he experienced upon being created. He describes his flight from Victor’s apartment into the wilderness and his gradual acclimation to the world through his discovery of the sensations of light, dark, hunger, thirst, and cold. The monster visits a village, where more people flee at the sight of him. As a result of these incidents, he decides to stay away from humans.


chapter 12 summary-
Observing his neighbors for a period of time, the monster notices that they often seem unhappy, though he is unsure why. He eventually realizes however, that their despair results from their poverty, to which he has been contributing by surreptitiously stealing their food. Torn by his guilty conscience, he stops stealing their food and does what he can to reduce their hardship, gathering wood at night to leave at the door for their use.
The monster becomes aware that his neighbors are able to communicate with each other using strange sounds. Learning their language, he tries to match the sounds they make with the actions they perform. He acquires a basic knowledge of the language, including the names of the young man and woman, Felix and Agatha. He admires their graceful forms and is shocked by his ugliness when he catches sight of his reflection in a pool of water. He spends the whole winter in the hovel, unobserved and well protected from the elements, and grows increasingly affectionate toward his unwitting hosts.

• The monster’s growing understanding of the social significance of family is connected to his sense of 'otherness' and solitude. The cottagers’ devotion to each other underscores Victor’s total abandonment of the monster; ironically, observing their kindness actually causes the monster to suffer, as he realises how alone he is. This lack of interaction with others, compounds the monster’s lack of social identity. As a marxist would argue the feeling of being alienated.
• The theme of nature’s sublimity, of the connection between human moods and natural surroundings, relfects the monster’s childlike reaction to springtime. Nature proves as important to the monster as it is to Victor: as the temperature rises and the winter ice melts, the monster takes comfort in a suddenly green and blooming world, glorying in nature’s creation when he cannot enjoy in his own.
• Like Victor, the monster has awareness that knowledge is dangerous, After realizing that he is different from human beings, “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.” Knowledge is permanent and irreversible; once gained, it cannot be dispossessed. Just as the monster, a product of knowledge, spins out of Victor’s control, so too can knowledge itself, once uncovered, create irreversible harm.
• Certain elements of the narrative style change as the perspective transitions from Victor to the monster. Both narrators are emotional, sensitive, aware of nature’s power, and concerned with the dangers of knowledge; both express themselves in an elegant, Romantic tone. The similarity of their tones arises as a function of the filtering inherent in the layered narrative: the monster speaks through Victor, Victor speaks through Walton, and Walton ultimately speaks through the sensitive, Romantic Shelley. However, we can explore whether the structure of the novel itself helps explain these narrative parallels. The growing list of similarities between Victor and the monster suggests that the two characters may not be so different after all.

Chapter 13-Chapter 14


The monster learns to read, and, since Felix uses Ruins of Empires to instruct Safie, he learns a bit of world history in the process. Now able to speak and understand the language perfectly, the monster learns about human society by listening to the cottagers’ conversations. Reflecting on his own situation, he realises that he is deformed and alone. “Was I then a monster,” he asks, “a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?” He also learns about the pleasures and obligations of the family and of human relations in general, which deepens the agony of his own isolation.
The monster is able to reconstruct the history of the cottagers. He realises that their wealth was stripped away.

• A new narrative voice is introduced gives another perspective of the novel. Their story is transmitted from the cottagers to the monster, from the monster to Victor, from Victor to Walton, and from Walton to his sister, at which point the reader finally gains access to it. This layering of stories within stories enables the reworking of familiar ideas in new contexts. For example the sense of “otherness” that many characters in Frankenstein feels. His deformity, his ability to survive extreme conditions, and the grotesque circumstances of his creation all serve to mark him as the ultimate outsider. 
• The monster’s fascination with the relationship between Felix and Safie lies in his desperate desire for Victor to accept him. Felix’s willingness to risk everything for the sake of someone who has been unjustly punished gives the monster hope that Victor will recognize the hurtful injustice of abandoning him. However, just as Felix’s bravery in helping Safie’s father escape stands in stark contrast to Victor’s shameful unwillingness to save Justine, so does Felix’s compassion for Safie underscore Victor’s cold hatred for the monster.

Chapter 15- Chapter 17

• Chapter 15- While searching for food in the woods around the cottage one night, the monster finds an abandoned leather satchel containing some clothes and books. Eager to learn more about the world than he can discover through the chink in the cottage wall, he brings the books back to his hovel and begins to read.
  Chapter 16-In the wake of this rejection, the monster swears to revenge himself against all human beings, his creator in particular. Journeying for months out of sight of others, he makes his way towards Geneva. On the way, he spots a young girl, seemingly alone; the girl slips into a stream and appears to be on the verge of drowning. When the monster rescues the girl from the water, the man accompanying her, suspecting him of having attacked her, shoots him.
  Chapter 17- The monster tells Victor that it is his right to have a female monster companion. Victor refuses at first, but the monster appeals to Victor’s sense of responsibility as his creator. He tells Victor that all of his evil actions have been the result of a desperate loneliness. He promises to take his new mate to South America to hide in the jungle far from human contact. With the sympathy of a fellow monster, he argues, he will no longer be compelled to kill.. Victor becomes skeptical about the creation of a female monster, the monster tells Victor that he will monitor Victor’s progress and that Victor need not worry about contacting him when his work is done.
  Analysis:
  • Paradise Lost, here and throughout the novel, provides development for the monster as he tries to understand his identity. Comparing himself to both Adam and Satan, perceiving himself as both human and demonic, the monster is poised uncomfortably between two realms. “Like Adam,” he says, “I was created apparently united by no link to any other being in existence,” but “many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition; for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me.” Scolded like Adam and cursed like Satan, the monster is painfully aware of his creator’s utter contempt for him.
  • The theme of  nature reappears in the monster’s narrative, and nature’s ability to affect the monster powerfully, as it does Victor, humanizes him.Whereas Victor seeks the high, cold, hard world of the Alps for comfort, as if to freeze his guilt about the murder, the monster finds solace in the soft colors and smells of a springtime forest, symbolizing his desire to reveal himself to the world and interact with others. “Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them; and, forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy,” the monster says. Unlike Victor, he is able to push away, at least temporarily, the negative aspects of his existence.
  
  Chapter 18-  After his fateful meeting with the monster on the glacier, Victor puts off the creation of a new, female creature. He begins to have doubts about the wisdom of agreeing to the monster’s request. He realises that the project will require him to travel to England to gather information. His father notices that his spirits are troubled much of the time Victor, still racked by guilt over the deaths of William and Justine, is now newly horrified by the task in which he is about to engage and asks him if his impending marriage to Elizabeth is the source of his melancholy. Victor assures him that the prospect of marriage to Elizabeth is the only happiness in his life
  Victor and Alphonse arrange a two-year tour, on which Henry Clerval, eager to begin his studies after several years of unpleasant work for his father in Geneva, will accompany Victor. After traveling for a while, they reach London.

  Summary: Chapter 19-Victor and Henry journey through England and Scotland, but Victor grows impatient to begin his work and free himself of his bond to the monster. Victor has an acquaintance in a Scottish town, with whom he urges Henry to stay while he goes alone on a tour of Scotland. Henry becomes reluctant, and Victor leaves for a distant desolate island in the Orkneys to complete his project. Quickly setting up a laboratory in a small shack, Victor devotes many hours to working on his new creature. He often has trouble continuing his work, however, knowing how unsatisfying, even grotesque, the product of his labor will be.

• Analysis: Chapters 18–20

  •  An appreciation of nature is not the only aspect of Victor’s character that Henry seems to have adopted: Henry is now enthusiastic about natural philosophy and eager to explore the world. “In Clerval I saw the image of my former self.” Henry represents the impending ruin of another young, brilliant man by science; this can represent the healthy, safe route to scientific knowledge that Victor never took. In either case, Victor’s emotional outbursts strongly foreshadow Henry’s death: “And where does he now exist?” he asks. “Is this gentle and lovely being lost forever?The theme of the passive, an innocent woman manifested in the mother who sacrifices herself for her daughter, the fiancée who waits endlessly for her future husband, and the orphan girl who is rescued from poverty culminates in this section with the female monster whose creation Victor suddenly aborts after being struck by doubts about the correctness of his actions. Though never alive, the female monster is a powerful presence: to Victor, she represents another crime against humanity and nature; to the monster, she represents his one remaining hope for a life not spent alone.

  • Victor sprinkles his speech with metanarrative comments that remind the reader of the relationship between storyteller and audience, shape the upcoming narrative, and demonstrate the narrator’s deep emotional investment in his story. “I must pause here; for it requires all my fortitude to recall the memory of the frightful events which I am about to relate, in proper detail, to my recollection,” Victor says, illustrating that he is overwhelmed by emotion and offering a glimpse of the horrific story that he is about to tell. Victor’s apostrophes to his absent friends serve the same purposes, adding to the emotional impact of his speech, emphasizing his nostalgic memories, and calling attention to the layered narrative. When Victor cries out “Clerval! Beloved Friend! Even now it delights me to record your words,” the reader senses the power of Victor’s emotion and its ultimate uselessness against the force of fate. Additionally, the mention of “record[ing]” Henry’s words underscores the fact that it is only through Walton that the reader has access to the other characters and their narratives.