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Summary English 214 Exam: Frankenstein notes & quotes (colour coded by themes)
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Exam notes for english studies 214 frankenstein exam. includes notes, analysis and a quote bank colour-coded by theme.
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FRANKENSTEIN• Destabilised binary of human and non-human
• Uncanny: both familiar and disturbingly foreign
• Polyvalent: multiple perspectives (mediated by epistolary form)
UNCANNY
• Intended to be ideal but ends up monstrously ugly
• Begins with compassion, deteriorates to anger and vengeance (both equally
human emotions)
• His uncanniness comes from his familiarity; what is actually disturbing is how
familiar he is to us - how human he is
• Slippery narrative: literary tool to discomfort reader (evokes anxiety)
PROMETHEUS
• God bound to rock whose liver was taken by an eagle everyday (tenacity)
• Victor plays god (lightning & electricity symbols) and echoes Satan in his
creation of his own hell
• Victor & Walton’s romanticised masculine construction alludes to a promethean
characterisation, but the lack of focus on them unsettles this norm
NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
• Outer narrative encloses multiple narratives (poly-vocal)
• Creature’s narrative is at the heart <3
• Complex narrative: embedded stories, flashbacks, etc. (disorienting)
• Who is the protagonist? No singular hero emphasises relationality over
individuality
• Embedded narrative emphasises confusion & suggests secrecy
EPISTOLARY FORM
• Overarching frame (letters)
• Creates distance (both temporal and geographical) & disorganisation
, RETROSPECTIVE NARRATIVE
• Events happened in past
• Breaking of letter conventions + the lapses of time blur the past and present
(discomforts us)
• Although the events are past, they are being described in the present, and they
are unresolved, which makes them uncanny
NARRATIVE INDETERMINACY
• Undefined (she never says who is talking or when they are talking)
• Ending is ambiguous (not knowing if monster lives on or kills himself reflects
narrative indeterminacy)
• Media res (middle of action) = disorientating effect
MIRRORING
• Doppelganger allusion presented by the ghostly mirroring of the pair
• Blurred line between Victor and the creature
• Victor is isolated by the creature’s burden just like how the creature is isolated as
a whole
• Narrative doubling
• Victor gets engaged at same time as creature decides he wants a mate
• Both enslaved by each-others existence
MORE SUBTLE FORMS OF DOUBLING
• When victor thinks of the creature he often appears
• The breaking of victors promise (to build a mate) precipitates the making of the
creature’s promise (to kill Elizabeth)
• Victor’s imprisonment mirrors creature’s trapped existence: lost, confused, treated
cruelly, criminalised unjustly.
• Except that Victor receives no punishment (despite him being equally if not
principally guilty) and his punishment is his entire existence
• Victor commits to hunting down the creature the same way the creature had to
hunt down him
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