O’Hara 2QSQ #2 – 9:11:23

PART 1: PREPARING FOR DISCUSSION

SOURCE IDEAS:

“Perhaps this is one of the reasons why, unlike the monsters of classical antiquity, Frankenstein’s persecution of his monster is no entry ticket for him to the heroic status, but rather forces the reader to ask which of the two is the greatest monster: is it Frankenstein for rejecting and wanting to destroy his “child,” no matter how ugly he is, or is it the monster for turning against the “parent” who gave him life, no matter how badly he treats him?”(240-241).

“So whilst Jeckyll’s inner evil is presented as a fundamental part of the human condition, Wilde comes closer to Shelley’s presentation of human nature as turning monstrous due to the effects of the outside world upon the individual” (251).

SYNTHESIZING COMMENT/ANALYSIS:

I find that these two passages connect on a very prominent theme when I think of contemporary monsters where, in some cases, we as readers or an audience want to take the side of the monster — or to speak to well-known situations, the “bad guy.” I think both of these passages draw at the point that we are getting a backstory and a narrative from the monster that other characters in the story aren’t. For instance, Victor isn’t hearing all we do from his monster — that emotion and longing for human connection and acceptance turning bitter and violet; he sees the effects while we understand the human pain associated. With Wilde, it is more this idea that we can see the societal shifts and understand the seemingly unavoidable nature of corruption, but again, we can see the workings of Dorian’s mind and the subtle encroachments that others in his society cannot. This brings to mind the point Cohen makes in his last thesis, “The Monster Stands at the Threshold of Becoming,” where he alleges, “They bring not just a fuller knowledge of our place in history and the history of knowing our place, but they bear self-knowledge, human-knowledge — and a discourse all the more sacred as it arises from the Outside”(Cohen 20). As with Six and Thompson’s excerpts, this uncomfortableness spurs from being forced as audiences to examine not just the monster but why we feel bad for them – thus, acknowledging this connection to the ‘we’ who created them, pushing them to become representatives of the other and outsider.

QUESTION:

How does this idea Cohen raises that monsters ask us why we have created them maybe lead into a discussion of how constructed our social conventions are, in the Victorian age and now. Suppose we accept the argument that monsters in the Victorian period hit on cultural anxieties and social norms. In that case, it might be interesting to question what it means that monsters in contemporary works bear less of a physical embodiment of a monster that we see in Frankenstein’s monster or Victor Hugo’s Quasimodo and more of the internal characteristics and perspectives. What could this physicality have gained to the themes and messages of monster culture in the 19th century that we don’t adhere to as much today? Would we call what would have been a monster a villain today?

PART 2: IN-CLASS WRITING RESPONSE (NAME:__________________)