Frankenstein Chapter 4 Presentation

The Enlightenment, Proletariat, a Creation and its own Creation

Rachel Kim English 2H P7 Mr. Silberstein

Chapter IV

Power of not Knowing

Conflict Action Resolution

"I see by your eagerness [....] that you expect to be informed of the secret [...] listen patiently until the end of my story" (57)

"But I forget that I am moralising in the most interesting part of my tale; and your looks remind me to proceed." (59)

(Point of View)

Thought

Thesis

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Johanna M. Smith. Frankenstein: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical, Historical, and Cultural Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000. Print.

Montag, Warren. The "Workshop of Filthy Creation": A Marxist Reading of Frankenstein. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991, Second Edition, 2000

THANK YOU!!!

Monsters!

Historical Context

Hurricane

French Revolution's Monster

= industrial working class

= proletariat

Frankenstein's Monster

= product of Industrial Revolution

=reaction to the Enlightenment era

=obsession with science

=reflection of Frankenstein

Slave of Science

"No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success." (58)

Creation and its own Creation

Victor Frankenstein = Proletariat

Science>Victor Frankenstein>Creature

"Frankenstein thus rejects one of the most fundamental myths of the Enlightenment, the notion that scientific and economic progress will continually improve the condition of humankind..." (Montag 391)

"Learn from me [...] how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge" (Shelley 57)

Workshop of filthy creation

Enlightenment-Industrial Revolution-Frankenstein-Monster

Light and Food

"...I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any unwholesome trade, than an artist" (60)

Frankenstein and his Creature are both products of antagonistic social forces stemming from the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

"I collected bones from charnel-houses" (58)

"In a solitary chamber, or rather a cell" (58)

"The monster is a factitious totality assembled from the parts of a multitude of different individuals, in particular, the "poor"" (Montag 387)

"Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed?" (Shelley 56)

"I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter" (57)

"I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit." (58)

"...but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder" (Shelley 55)

"...from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me [...] I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret" (56)

"between the French Revolution of 1789 and the period of relative social stability" (Montag 384)

"attempt to create social orders based on justice or reason that had collapsed into tyranny or chaos" (385)