Tyr s Day, December 14: The Politics of Misfits

Transcription

1 Tyr s Day, December 14: The Politics of Misfits EQ: How is Frankenstein s creature so monstrous that even horror movies dare not show him? Welcome! Gather pen/pencil, paper, wits! Opening Freewrite: The Politics of Misfits Reading & Discussion: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Closing Freewrite: We re All Misfits Closing Activity: Build-A-Beast! ELACC12RI3: Analyze and explain how individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop ELACC12RI6: Determine an author s point of view or purpose in a text ELACC12W2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas ELACC12W4: Produce clear and coherent writing appropriate to task, purpose, and audience ELACC12W10: Write routinely over extended and shorter time frames ELACC12SL1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions ELACC12SL3: Evaluate a speaker s point of view, reasoning, evidence and rhetoric ELACC12L1: Demonstrate standard English grammar and usage in speaking and writing. ELACC12L2: Use standard English capitalization, punctuation, spelling in writing. ELACC12L6: Acquire and use general academic and domain-specific words and phrases

2 Opening Freewrite: The Politics of Misfits The 1964 TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (easily the sharpest examination of diversity politics ever filmed CBS tonight at 8) shows Rudolph being given three ways to deal with what Sam the Snowman calls his um nonconformity : a. Cover with a fake nose, hope nobody notices. There are more important things than comfort! yells his Dad. b. Flee Christmastown, seek other Misfits. Douse your nose, and run like crazy! yells Yukon Cornelius, as they flee the Abominable Snowmonster and seek the Island of Misfit Toys. c. The whole trick is jumping into the wind flying lesson given by Comet before he realizes that Rudolph is a freak. Freewrite 100 words: Which do you think is the best advice?

3 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818) Italicized passages are from Shelley s text; plot summary (adapted from is in italics. [Frankenstein is an epistolary novel, told as a series of letters. Robert Walton, captain of a ship bound for the North Pole, writes them to his sister back in London. Walton s ship gets stuck in Arctic ice, and Walton sees a man chasing a giant across the ice. The man, Victor Frankenstein, collapses and is rescued, and he tells Walton his strange story. Victor says that he had an ideal childhood in Switzerland with his friend Clerval and adopted sister Elizabeth; his father was loving but intellectually distant. As a young man Victor entered the University of Ingolstadt to study natural philosophy what we today call science. He was obsessed with finding the secret of life, and spent months building a man out of human body parts he d stolen from graveyards. Then, one night, it happened:] It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room. I threw myself on my bed in my clothes.i was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel. I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed: when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch -- the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped, and rushed down stairs.

4 [Victor wandered all night until, then collapsed from guilt and horror. He got a letter from his father saying that his youngest brother, William, was murdered, and hurried home to find that a servant girl was accused and executed for the crime, despite her innocence. Victor was overcome with guilt: he violated Nature by creating the creature, and it killed two innocent people which means, of course, that Victor was responsible. But still he told no one about the creature. Hoping to find peace, Victor went hiking in the Alps, and decided to cross a gigantic glacier.] The surface is very uneven, rising like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and marked by deep rifts. I spent nearly two hours in crossing it.[then Victor sat down to admire the mountains and glacier:] Their icy and glittering peaks shone in the sunlight over the clouds. I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature, also, as he approached, seemed to exceed that of man.i perceived, as the shape came nearer (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom I had created. I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach, and then close with him in mortal combat. He approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes. But I scarcely observed this; rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt. "Devil," I exclaimed, "do you dare approach me? do not you fear the fierce vengeance of my arm on your miserable head? Begone, vile insect! or rather, stay, that I may trample you to dust!... "I expected this reception," said the demon. "All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends." "Abhorred monster! fiend that thou art! the tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! you reproach me with your creation; come on, then, that I may extinguish the spark which I so negligently bestowed." My rage was without bounds; I sprang on him, impelled by all the feelings which can arm one being against the existence of another. He easily eluded me, and said: "Be calm! I entreat you to hear me, before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine; my joints more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."

5 [The creature told how he first felt heat and cold, hunger and thirst, weariness and energy; how he first heard the lovely songs of birds but was frustrated because he could not make those sounds; and, especially, how he tried to interact with people, only to be attacked or fled from. One day he happened upon a peasant family, the DeLaceys. Hiding in a woodshed attached to the DeLacey shack, the creature saw the love family members showed for each other, and was moved by the words he heard them speak to each other. He learned to speak and think by listening to them read Milton and Shakespeare. He began to do secret good deeds for this poor family gathering food and leaving it at their door, for instance. Then one day, just as he was beginning to think of himself as human, he first saw his reflection in a pond.] I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. One day the oldest DeLacey, kindly and blind, was alone, and the creature spoke with him. The old man welcomed him; but the other DeLaceys panicked when they arrived home, and drove the creature away. The creature finally realized the extent of his alienation from humankind.] I was not even of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they, and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?... No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? So, the monster says, he turned to violence, murdering any who were close to Victor in order to force Victor to find and acknowledge him. Finally the creature decided that his only chance for happiness is for Victor to create for him a mate: I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects. This being you must create.if you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again: I will go to the vast wilds of South America. My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself, and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food. Victor refused at first, but finally agreed, and headed for England to create a female monster. One night, struck by doubts about the his actions, Victor glances out the window to see the monster glaring in at him with a frightening grin. Horrified by the possibility that he might create a super-race that would destroy humanity, Victor tears the female creature to shreds. The monster, enraged, vows revenge: I will be with you on your wedding night!

6 Later that night, Victor takes a boat out onto a lake and dumps the pieces of the female creature in the water. The wind picks up and prevents him from returning to the island. In the morning, he finds himself ashore near an unknown town. Upon landing, he is arrested and informed that he will be tried for a murder discovered the previous night. Victor denies any knowledge of the murder, but when shown the body, he is shocked to behold his friend Henry Clerval, with the mark of the monster s fingers on his neck. Victor falls ill, raving and feverish, and is kept in prison until his recovery, after which he is acquitted of the crime. Shortly after returning to Geneva with his father, Victor marries Elizabeth. He fears the monster s warning and suspects that he will be murdered on his wedding night. To be cautious, he sends Elizabeth away to wait for him. While he awaits the monster, he hears Elizabeth scream and realizes that the monster had been hinting at killing his new bride, not himself. Victor returns home to his father, who dies of grief a short time later. Victor vows to spend his life finding the monster and exacting his revenge, and tracks the monster northward, where he speaks to villagers in a tiny frozen town: A gigantic monster had arrived the night before, armed with a gun and many pistols, putting to flight the inhabitants of a solitary cottage through fear of his terrific appearance. He had carried off their store of winter food, and placing it in a sledge, to draw which he had seized on a numerous drove of trained dogs, he had harnessed them, and the same night, to the joy of the horror-struck villagers, had pursued his journey across the sea in a direction that led to no land. On a dogsled, Victor almost catches up with the monster, but the ice breaks, leaving an unbridgeable gap between them. At this point, Walton encounters Victor, and the narrative catches up to the time of Walton s fourth letter to his sister. Walton tells the remainder of the story in another series of letters to his sister. Victor, already ill when the two men meet, worsens and dies shortly thereafter. When Walton returns, several days later, to the room in which the body lies, he is startled to see the monster weeping over Victor./: Over him hung a form which I cannot find words to describe; gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions. As he hung over the coffin his face was concealed by long locks of ragged hair; but one vast hand was extended, in colour and apparent texture like that of a mummy. When he heard the sound of my approach he ceased to utter exclamations of grief and horror and sprung towards the window. Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome yet appalling hideousness. [The monster tells Walton that, even through his fury at Frankenstein, he loved and pitied him, and that he feels profound guilt at having made his life miserable. He says he will build a gigantic bonfire on the ice and climb into its flames to die, then leaps out of the window.]

7 Closing Freewrite (100 words): We re All Misfits As we have discussed, Frankenstein s monster, far from being less than human, is actually intellectually, physically, and morally superior to human beings and, just maybe, not even ugly in any specific way ( I had selected his features as beautiful ). If this is the case, why do even horror movies fear to show him?

8 Group Activity: Build-A-Beast Victor Frankenstein intended to create not a monster, but a perfect man. So he assembled perfect body parts, and brought it all to life. His limbs were in proportion, he tells us, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful? Great God! Think you can do better? Assemble in groups of 1-3 and, using body parts of at least ten different famous people, create something. Draw a picture of your creature, labeling each part by its origin. Then, as a group, freewrite 100 words explaining what makes your creature beautiful. Turn In Today: Opening Freewrite: The Politics of Misfits Frankenstein Reading Guide Completed Closing Freewrite: A Monster Too Far Build-a-Beast: Drawing and Freewrite Tomorrow: Computer Lab for Project!

9 Turn In Today: Opening Freewrite: The Politics of Misfits Frankenstein Reading Guide Completed Closing Freewrite: A Monster Too Far Build-a-Beast: Drawing and Freewrite Tomorrow: Computer Lab!

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