Frankenstein

The story is called Frankenstein, written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Frankenstein turns to forbidden sciences and discovers how to bring the dead back to life. When he does, he believes that he has created a monster and flees. The monster chases him and demands that he creates a mate for him. Frankenstein almost does, but he winds up refusing to do so. The monster kills everyone close to him before turning on Frankenstein and murdering him. At the end of the story, a sailor finds Frankenstein’s notes and tries to continue the quest.

The protagonist of the story is Victor Frankenstein, a man who has an obsession of bringing the dead back to life. Studying in Ingolstadt, Victor discovers the secret of life and creates a monster that he recoils from in horror. Victor keeps this creation a secret; his feeling of guilt and shame increase as he realizes he is helpless to stop the monster from ruining others’ lives, including his. Another main character is the monster, Victor’s eight-foot-tall, hideous creation. The monster is abandoned by his creator, and rejected by all those he comes into contact with; his feeling of abandonment compels him to root for revenge against Victor. Other characters in the story include the De Lacey family consisting of an elderly blind father, his two grown children, Agatha and Felix, and Felix’s wife. It is through observing the De Lacey family that the monster learns all that he knows about society and emotions as well as reading and speech. Henry Clerval, Victor’s best friend, nurses Victor back to health when he falls ill after the disappearance of the monster.  Henry becomes one of the monster’s victims, and Frankenstein is accused of his best friend’s murder. Another character is Elizabeth Lavenza, an orphan a few years younger than Victor, whom the Frankenstein’s adopt. William, Victor’s youngest brother and the darling of the Frankenstein family, ends up being strangled by the monster in the woods outside Geneva.

The setting of the novel ranges all over Europe in the eighteenth century. The tale begins and ends in the Arctic with the explorer Robert Walton seeking a northwest passage. On his journey he first meets Victor Frankenstein and then the monster himself. The arctic atmosphere itself is a fitting symbol for the scientific journey on which Frankenstein has begun and Walton is beginning.

The conflict in the story would have to be man vs. self. Victor is apparently appalled at his own creation which could be said to be a part of him. After all, he did create the monster. One can obviously see that Victor is tearing himself apart throughout the novel due to his creation. The people that the monster killed in the story, including Elizabeth, William, Clerval, Justine, Victor's father and Victor himself, would all be alive and well if this monster had not been created. It is because of this that Victor cannot stand himself, initiating his outright depression and self-loathing. Another conflict that can be seen is the effort of the monster to extract love from his creator.  When he doesn’t receive love, he turns to murder instead.

The theme of the story is dangerous knowledge. One can understand this theme as Victor attempts to go beyond accepted human limits and access the secret of life. This access would allow Victor and other scientists to create humankind. The knowledge of creationism would not only make Victor famous, but rich beyond the human imagination. Life could be prolonged and duplicated. Duplication could allow criminals to go free, while their innocent counter-parts are locked away.

There is symbolism all throughout the novel. The windows and shutters are the borderlines that the creature could not cross until the moment when he reached into Victor's life and took Elizabeth from him. Yellow is the color of evil, the monster’s eyes, and the moonlight. Lightning represents the moment of life when energy filled the monster. In the story, the lake symbolized the book’s potential. The way the lake is portrayed mimics the tone of the story. For example, it’s peaceful when Victor is young and innocent, but when Victor is depressed after hearing of William's murder and is returning home, the lake reflects his mood. "Vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire."

I would recommend this book to anyone who has a love for science, science fiction, and/or fantasy. I think that this specific book is geared toward upper middle and high school students. The mind-set for this story requires some level of maturity as it is necessary to understand the monster’s feelings and his need for love and acceptance. The graphic nature of the story makes me feel that it is written for an older audience. Even though young children can understand a need for love and acceptance, maturity is needed to fully comprehend why the monster acts cruelly toward those who refuse to love him.

Through the Looking Glass

The title of the story is Through the Looking-Glass, written by Lewis Carroll. The book is about a young girl named Alice. While playing with a kitten and staring at a mirror, Alice wonders about what the world would be like on the other side of the mirror. To her surprise, she is able to go through the mirror to explore another dimension. She finds a book with looking-glass poetry, “Jabberwocky,” that she can only read by holding it up to a mirror. While leaving the house, she enters into a garden, where the flowers speak to her mistaking her for a flower. Alice then meets the Red Queen, who proposes a throne to Alice if she moves to the eighth rank in a chess game. Alice is placed as the White Queen's pawn, and she starts the game by taking a train to the fourth rank since pawns in chess can move two spaces on the first move. She then meets Tweedledee and Tweedledum, who she is familiar with from the famous nursery rhyme. After reciting the long poem, “The Walrus and the Carpenter” to Alice, the two continue to act out the events of their own poem. Alice carries on to meet the White Queen, who later transforms into a sheep. Here the White Queen helps her cross into the sixth square. The sixth square brings complete madness, introducing Humpty Dumpty, and witnessing the furious battle between the Unicorn and the Lion fighting for the crown. Square Seven delivers the White Knight, who helps guide Alice to the last square. When she reaches the eighth and final square, Alice finally becomes a queen alongside the Red and White Royalty, and a party is held in celebration. As they toast to the new queen, Alice wakes up in her old world to find that she has been dreaming the adventure. Or has she?

The protagonist of the story is a seven-year-old girl with good intentions named Alice. Her dream leads her to exciting adventures in Looking-Glass World. Alice has determined her own thoughts of the peculiar world and becomes aggravated when Looking-Glass World challenges those insights. The main antagonist is the Red Queen, a fussy dominating woman who makes Alice participate in the chess game. Though she is civilized, she harasses Alice about her lack of common sense and good manners. Other characters include the Red and White Kings, the White Queen, the twins, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Humpty Dumpty, and the White Knight. The Red King is a king who might be dreaming this whole story, while the White King is a quite the one to be very paranoid and senile. The White Queen appears to be very absent-minded, yet she is the opposite of the Red Queen. With the twins, whether they are fighting or entertaining each other, these two never stop. Humpty Dumpty is an egg-like creature who thinks himself a very wise one, and who has connections with the White King. The White Knight is a kind and gentle, yet clumsy, old fellow who rescues Alice from the Red Knight and helps her on her journey.

Through the Looking-Glass is set in Victorian England in the upper class home of Dean Liddell in Oxford. The significance of this particular setting is that the looking-glass world is composed of familiar English scenes, such as riding on a train, walking in a flower garden, browsing in a shop, etc. If the setting of the story was changed, the outcome of it would not be the same. It would give a different feeling to it, and the scenes of the story would not necessarily symbolize anything.

Conflict happens whenever Alice meets a new character and is being confronted with its peculiar rules and behavior. The main conflict occurs during Alice's dinner-party, when strange things start to happen and the guests convert into other beings. Resolution comes when a frustrated Alice seizes the table-cloth and crashes everything onto the floor. She then picks up the Red Queen and starts shaking her. This shaking makes Alice wake up and realize that it is only one of the kittens that she is holding.

Although the first book has the deck of cards as a theme, this second book is slightly based on a game of chess, played on a giant chessboard with fields for squares. Most main characters met in the story symbolize a chess piece, along with Alice herself being a pawn. However, the chess game described cannot be carried out legally due to a move where white doesn't move out of check. The looking-glass world is divided into sections by brooks, with the crossing of each brook indicates a notable change in the action and scene of the story.  The brooks represent the divisions between squares on the chessboard, and Alice crossing them represents the advancing of her piece one square. The sequence of moves is not always followed which goes along with the book's mirror image reversal theme.

This story is filled with symbolism. The characters represent chess pieces, the scenes symbolize the squares on the chessboard, and the setting represents England. A big form of sybolism is when Alice pulls rushes from the water in Chapter Five; they represent dreams. The rapid fading of the rushes’ sweet scent after being picked corresponds to the memory of a dream after a person wakes up. Another major form of symbolism is when Tweedledum and Tweedledee tell Alice that she is only a creation of the Red King’s dream, which implies that Looking-Glass World is not in Alice’s dream. The Red King becomes an almighty figure who dreams up all of Alice’s adventures, believing the idea that she does not really have any identity beyond what she is allowed in the context of the dream.

I would greatly recommend that others read this book. Not only is there impressive imagery, but the acknowledgement of a possible second world out there rivals the belief shared by many today that life can exist on other planets. Carroll uses games symbolically which will appeal to a wide audience. Characters, both realistic (as Alice) and imaginary, hold the attention of the reader making this classic tale one that both children and adults can enjoy.