Frankenstein, written Aug. 9, 2010
I don’t re-read every novel that my students read each year. If I did there’d be no time for grading their papers, and other reading, as it’s not uncommon to have 4 of my 5 classes in different works at any given time. But, each year I peruse through any that I’m feeling a little rusty on. So, since I didn’t teach AP last year, and it had been awhile, I’ve given Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein a cursory look the last few days before I delve into the summer reading analyses sitting in my gmail inbox.
I always get more out of a classic with subsequent readings, but I think I enjoyed traipsing through Europe with Shelley’s overly ambitious student and his beast because I’d just been to so many of the tranquil, yet haunting, places she describes.
As Shelley describes the beauty of Lake Lucerne and how the Swiss Alps border the lakes, I had a vivid image in my mind, not from her description alone, but from my personal thrill of such breathtaking beauty. When Frankenstein and his father rest in peaceful Strasbourg, I realize that Shelley herself would have walked the same avenues, gazed on the same rivers, and perhaps ate under the same 350-year-old sycamore tree. And the narrow crooked buildings lining the old town streets were the same as well. Did she wander through the cathedral and ponder Paradise Lost from which she parallels the monster’s relationship with Frankenstein to man’s with God or even Satan with God?
For the ice packs of the far north, I still must solely rely on Shelley’s eye, and probably always will. I kind of wish I’d thought about Mary Shelley and her companions on their stormy night next to the lake where they made the pact to write a story of horror and wonder. Maybe I would have if the winds had whipped up a squall and lightning had shaken the mountains.
But, for me the lakes exuded feelings of joy and innocence as I watched Breck and Helen dip their sticks into the water’s edge. Perhaps I should have, but Mary Shelley’s and her monster’s unhappy lives never entered my mind.
