What fresh hell is this?

Why doesn't Frankenstein realize that the monster's pledge 'I shall be with you on your wedding night threatens Elizabeth as well as himself?

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 02:11:20 -0400

Because Dr. Frankenstein is far too self absorbed to realize that the monster might be talking about anyone but him. Frankenstein’s great fault in the book is his Ego. He tries to become God (create life). then when he does like a chicken he runs away. Frankenstein never realizes that his ego is his down fall, so he never sees the monster attacking anyone but him.

Why does Frankenstein agree to create a bride for the monster, then procrastinate and finally break his promise?

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 02:04:09 -0400

When the monster asks Victor in the frozen cave to make him a mate, Victor is terrified by his creation, believes the monster wants to kill him; so, his best chance at survival would be to agree to anything the monster asked him for. Victor Frankenstein is a rather selfish, egocentric human being, so it wouldn’t disagree with his character to only have his well-being in mind, and lying to keep himself alive doesn’t seem something that would worry such a person.

Frankenstein

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:52:51 -0400

Frankenstein

The alternative title for the book if 'The Modern Prometheus.' What does Shelley mean by this?

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:51:54 -0400

Prometheus was a Greek Titan who created mankind then decided to cause some trouble. He was then sentenced to ever-lasting torture as his punishment. This myth is similar to Frankenstein because Victor rebels against how life is naturally made and is then punished by his creation.

Victor doesnt give his monster a name. What does this do for the story? What does it say about us in society today that we think the monsters name is Frankenstein?

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:49:39 -0400

Well, considering Victor ran away from the monster shortly after it was created and tried to forget it ever existed, it’s not surprising that the monster didn’t have a name. And I don’t think it says much at all that “we” think the monster’s name is Frankenstein. Look at the movies: it’s a movie about a monster, and it’s called Frankenstein. Usually if the title is a name, it’s the name of the central character in the story. Like Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Lolita, etc. I suppose there would have been less confusion had the book simply been titled Modern Prometheus.

Why can't Frankenstein tell anyone - even his father or Elizabeth-why he blames himself for the death of William, Justine and Henry Clerval?

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:38:20 -0400

At first Frankenstein does not tell anyone about his monster. He believes that no one else “except I, the creator, who would believe, unless his senses convinced him, in the existence of the living monument of presumption and rash ignorance which I had let loose upon the world?” (65). He wouldn’t tell anyone because he didn’t think any one would believe him. Frankenstein is just any other human- how would you feel about talking to anyone about such a sensitive subject as that?

‘Arcadia’

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:35:28 -0400

‘Arcadia’

Why does Frankenstein filled with disgust, calling the monster 'my enemy', as soon as he has created him?

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:32:43 -0400

Frankenstein is filled with disgust because of his creature’s appearance. Instead of getting to know what the creature is like, he he pushes him away immediately. Frankenstein does the typical thing and judges the monster by his appearance, which is a recurring theme in the novel.

Why does Frankenstein become obsessed with creating life?

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:22:52 -0400

Frankenstein became obsessed with creating life after his mother died from Scarlet fever. Before, he was already consumed by the idea of life and how its created but with the death of his mother, he became even more obsessed with whether someone can return from the dead and if he was able to make it happen. While at University, he was studying the human anatomy and so he began digging up dead bodies and experimenting with electricity.

What romantic concepts do the characters of Victor and Walton Illustrate?

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:18:25 -0400

In the book Frankenstein, Victor and his family travel by carriage and later as they enter the mountains, they travel by mule. In the novel, Victor illustrates the romantic notion of the doomed lover. Walton takes the role of noble hero who is unable to save his friend.

Arcadia themes and symbols

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:13:19 -0400

Themes

Emotion versus Intellect

There are two sorts of knowledge in Arcadia: the knowledge of love and academic knowledge. These two types of knowledge are in constant conflict throughout the text. It is only the proposition of marriage, the intellectual justification for sex, which allows a resolution between the two forces. The theme of love vs. intellect is touched upon in the first pages of the play. Thomasina interrupts her lesson with Septimus by asking what carnal knowledge is. Sexual knowledge always acts in conflict with intellectual knowledge, and here it gets in the way of the lesson. Thomasina also remarks on the conflict between emotion and intellect in her history lesson. Her question is prompted by Septimus himself who was found having sex with Mrs. Chater in the gazebo the day before. Thomasina describes Cleopatra as making “noodles of our sex” because Cleopatra was weakened by love. Thomasina heralds Queen Elizabeth who would not have been tempted by love to give away land or power. The great Hannah Jarvis is, like Thomasina’s Queen Elizabeth, unswayed by romantic passions. She believes, as does Thomasina, that romantic inclinations would destroy or distract her from her work. Hannah refuses warmth or emotion: she refuses a kiss, denies Bernard’s propositions, laughs at Valentine’s proposal, and brushes off Gus’s flirtation.

Nonetheless, Hannah, like Thomasina, Septimus, and Gus all waltz at the conclusion of the play. Hannah cannot refuse emotion or the bashful Gus by the end of the play and is drawn into an uncomfortable and uneasy dance. The conflict between emotion and intellect is resolved because Hannah suddenly understands that the two are inseparable. Hannah is unlike Thomasina, who unconsciously understands this, driven forcefully by the mystery of both.

The Mystery of Sex

Sex remains the final mystery of Arcadia. Septimus, in the conclusion of the play, reveals the final sadness and emptiness of an academic life: “When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.” Septimus implies that the mysteries of mathematics will someday be solved. As if knowing his own fate, Septimus embraces and kisses Thomasina in earnest, finally indulging in the mystery of his attraction and love. Septimus will not go to Thomasina’s room, although she asks him, but he is restrained for a reason that remains unknown. Septimus realizes the ultimately unfulfilling nature of academic progress but will only tragically experience the fulfilling nature of love for a brief moment in a waltz and kiss with Thomasina. In the same manner, Hannah Jarvis submits to a dance with Gus. She, like Septimus, has solved her mystery and now looks to Gus for fulfillment and new mysteries.

The Path of Knowledge

Septimus describes to Thomasina the path of knowledge, a humanity that drops knowledge and learning as it picks up new ideas and developments. Septimus tells Thomasina she should not be upset at the loss of the library of Alexandria because such discoveries will be had again, in another time and possibly in another language. This story is ironic to the fate of Thomasina’s own discoveries that aren’t unearthed until 1993 by Valentine. Thomasina’s discoveries are made again: chaos theory and thermodynamics are formal concepts by the time her primer is found and analyzed. Arcadia works as a description of humanity’s own progression of knowledge. While Thomasina and Septimus make new discoveries, Hannah and Valentine work to find their discoveries. The work of Thomasina and Septimus is lost but later found again.

Motifs

Fire

Fire takes on multiple meanings in the play, but it most strongly symbolizes death and the eventual and inevitable end of the human species. Like Thomasina’s diagram of heat exchange, as exemplified by Mr. Noakes’s steam engine, all will eventually end. As the law of thermodynamics prescribes, we will all eventually burn up. Fire is destruction and death happening over and over again. Septimus burns Lord Byron’s letter, unread, a rare and valuable piece of historical literature. Fire is also sexual, the burn that keeps bodies in motion. Septimus observes that Mrs. Chater is in a state of “tropical humidity as would grown orchids in her drawers in January”. Thomasina and Valentine wish to describe and analyze the universal laws of heat and destruction. The final scene is the greatest culmination of the fire motif. While Valentine and Hannah discuss the meaning of Thomasina’s heat-exchange diagram, Thomasina holds the flame that will eventually cause her own destruction. As Thomasina and Septimus waltz, the audience is aware of Thomasina’s fate. We can see the workings and progress of the heat diagram before our eyes.

Sex

Sex persists as the anti-academic driving force in Arcadia. Academic knowledge is never separated far from carnal knowledge—academic knowledge somehow equating sexual prowess. For example, when Bernard makes his great discovery he immediately propositions Hannah, indicating how academic knowledge gives Bernard sexual confidence. Sex is also equated with heat, making it the eventual objective and need of all humans. The relationship between Thomasina’s theory of heat exchange and sex is clearly articulated by Chloe who tells Valentine that Newton forgot to account for sex in his deterministic universe. Heat, like sex, is unchangeable, persistent, and random.

Mathematics

Mathematics and “Simple English Algebra” is the foundation of Arcadia. The mysteries of math reveal greater truths about humanity and the family as a whole. Mathematics is also a source of pride within the play. Valentine, as a chaos mathematician himself, is reluctant to share Thomasina’s theory and fractal with Hannah. Thomasina’s algebra and geometry lessons culminate into her genius understanding of the laws of thermodynamics and chaos theory. The laws of thermodynamics dictate the fate of all the characters on stage, and the realization of such fate eventually conclude the play (most tragically, Thomasina’s own ironic death by fire). Septimus and Thomasina, along with Gus and Hannah, succumb to the law of thermodynamics by coming together in a waltz. The couples know their mathematical, unstoppable fate and embrace each other in spite of it.

Symbols

Garden

The Gardens of Sidley Park symbolize the transformation and transition between romanticism and classicism. Mr. Noakes wishes to alter the gardens into the picturesque and thoroughly romantic style and means to tear out the gazebo in favor of a hermitage and drain the lake with a newly improved steam engine. Lady Croom accuses Mr. Noakes of reading too many novels by Radcliff, such as The Castle of Otranto (actually written by Horace Walpole, as Mr. Chater points out), and The Mysteries of Udolpho. Mr. Noakes means to transform the green, lush perfect Englishman’s garden into an “eruption of gloomy forest and towering crag,” Lady Croom describes it as a haunt of “hobgoblins.” As Hannah describes it, the garden is a classical painting imposed on landscape or “untamed nature in the style of Salvatore Rosa … everything but vampires”. The garden represents romanticism, (for Hannah) a decline from thinking to emotion, and the need for “false emotion” and “cheap thrills.”

Regency Clothes

The modern day characters wear the Regency Clothes or clothes that would be worn to a fancy dress ball in Thomasina’s time. Regency Clothes symbolize high society and privilege. The dress not only links the two generations and time periods, but it reveals the hay day of the English aristocratic family. Chloe, Gus, and Valentine wear the outfits to have their pictures taken and dress for the annual dance. The dress reestablishes their power as a family and role in the community, seemingly diminished in modern times.

Primer

The Primer is the symbol of learning and academia. Thomasina is the first to use the primer, which once belonged to Septimus; however, at the conclusion of the play, Septimus has taken back his primer. Septimus’s use of his the primer once again symbolizes his return to being a student; this time he is a student of Thomasina, who has surpassed his knowledge and teachings.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 01:07:00 -0400

It is an ancient mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

“The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May’st hear the merry din.”

He holds him with his skinny hand,
“There was a ship,” quoth he.
“Hold off! unhand me, greybeard loon!”
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

He holds him with his glittering eye -
The wedding-guest stood still,
And listens like a three years’ child:
The Mariner hath his will.

The wedding-guest sat on a stone:
He cannot chose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed mariner.

“The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.

The sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.

Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon-”
The Wedding-guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.

The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.

The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast.
Yet he cannot choose but hear:
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.

“And now the Storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o’ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.

With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and snow
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.

And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken -
The ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!

At length did cross and Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God’s name.

It ate the food it ne’er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner’s hollo!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white moonshine.”

                                    “God save thee, ancient Mariner:
                               From the fiends, that plague thee thus! -
                             Why look’st thou so?” - “With my cross-bow
                                           I shot the Albatross.”

"There’s a loneliness that only exists in one’s mind. The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when..."

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 01:53:22 -0400

“There’s a loneliness that only exists in one’s mind. The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (via red-red-wine)

kittykatnatnat: Bright Star Bright star, would I were stedfast...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 02:38:40 -0500

kittykatnatnat:

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No-yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.

~John Keats

Photo

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 02:37:40 -0500

Photo

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:14:23 -0500

Nature

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:10:40 -0500

Nature to me is what reminds me of being home, when I look out of the window of the aeroplane and look down at the ground and I see the land covered in green, the trees and the river below, that’s when I know I have finally arrived home, back where I should be. Nature is freedom, it gives us a chance to run around and roll in the grass, nature allows us to never grow up.

"The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean"

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:05:52 -0500

““The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean””

- Robert Luis Stevenson

Photo

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:01:28 -0500

Photo

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:00:19 -0500