I chose to summarize the article “Frankenstein
and the Tradition of Realism” written by George Levine in 1973. The article
mentions that the character of Frankenstein was punished for his ambition. He
is cited as it was evil to aspire to greatness. Levine writes that, “fear and
distrust of those who act on such ambition.” The author goes on to say that evil
is usually a “consequence of maltreatment or injustice” but that the evil of
Frankenstein was chance. Numerous characters in the novel are similar to each
other. In the article the author writes that Frankenstein and his monster are, “two aspects of
the same being.” The lessons that were given to Walton towards the end of the
novel by Frankenstein were that he must sacrifice his ambition to others but
also to reject Frankenstein’s last wish for vengeance. The author writes that
because Walton rejects the wish for vengeance, “He is finally freed into a
better (and perhaps a lesser) life.” All the major and minor characters are
echoes of each other. The author writes that the novel is about one mind and
not the landscape even when it travels to all these exotic destinations.
Frankenstein failed in his responsibility to his creation. At
the end Levine writes that the monster has final peace in his destruction.
I
think this article would be good enough to use in Essay #3. George Levine read
Frankenstein differently from me but there was some overlap which I liked. The
author talks about the similarity and contrast of the characters and their
relationships along with Walton being freed from the destruction caused by his
ambition. This overlap made the article more interesting. The author of the article took some of my simpler
thoughts and went deeper into the novel in his analysis than I did. From
reading George Levine's article I learned more about some of the obvious deeper
meanings that I did not pick up on when I read Frankenstein.Link to introduction on Gothic fiction.
Brief history on Gothic fiction link here.
Image from: http://abstract.desktopnexus.com/get/47081
I think you did a good job summarizing this article. It gave me a good sense of what it is about and I intend to go back and read it now.
ReplyDeleteI also like that you talk about how even the though the author read the novel differently from you there was still overlap and it helped you find some deeper meanings to things you didn't necessarily pick up on before. I had a similar reaction to the article by Ellen Moers that I posted about.
All in all, I thought the criticisms that were provided were very helpful in taking the same novel and shedding light on it in many different and interesting ways and gave it even more depth for me.