Lesson Four considered the nature of CHAPTER FOUR of Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN. The class were asked to examine a key passage within this chapter and discuss the significance of key moments. Significant discussion was generated when discussing the following quotes from Victor's narrative:
- supernatural enthusiasm...
- Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman
- After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue....I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter
- I see by your eagerness...that you expect to be informed of the secret with which I am acquainted; that cannot be....I will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent....to your destruction and infallible misery
- feelings...bore me onwards like a hurricane
- life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator...No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs...
- My cheek had grown pale with study..my person had become emaciated with confinement
- I pursued nature to her hiding places
- My limbs now tremble and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul and sensation but for this one pursuit...a passing trance
- I collected bones from charnel houses; and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame
- In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation: my eye-balls were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughterhouse furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation.
- A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.
- Winter , spring, and summer passed away during my labours; but I did not watch the blossom or the expanding leaves- sights which before always yielded me supreme delight- so deeply was I engrossed in my occupation
- I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade....Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime
Lesson Five continued the discussion and considered Shelley's aim when presenting this key chapter. Students were encouraged to consider the key quotes in the context of the alternative title: THE MODERN PROMETHEUS.
HOMEWORK: Consider potential content for the essay:
WHAT IS SHELLEY'S AIM IN CHAPTER FOUR?
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