Daily Archives: January 4, 2014

Frankenstein’s Creature

This entry was posted in Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus and tagged alive dead human male monster non-human on by
FrankensteinCharacter: Frankenstein’s Creature

Source Text:  Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. New York: Illustrated Editions, 1932. Print.

Entry Author:  Claire Tierney

Mary Shelley originally published Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus in 1818.  The epistolary novel details the story of Dr. Frankenstein as he creates a human made of disparate parts, which he gathers from countless dead bodies. It is possible that he is created from several bodies of different race and ethnicity. Nevertheless, background is undoubtedly mixed, so he is perceived as an outsider and as disturbing. Every character who sees or interacts with the monster is both frightened and disgusted by him, even his creator, who reacts with “breathless horror as disgust filled [his] heart” upon first seeing him(52). His creature soon leaves and the doctor becomes depressed and ill. Meanwhile the creature lives as an outside observer of society, becoming eloquently spoken well-versed in classical literature. He has a human brain; it is his physical appearance which labels him non-human and uncanny.

Frankenstein’s creature is not only mixed with respect to his physicality, but he is also mixed with regard to his identity. Torn between human and nonhuman, he was created “for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body” (51). He is stuck between two binaries, alive and dead. The doctor’s creature is forced to live on the outskirts of civilization as all who encounter him find him abject and horrific.

After living in solitude for a time, the monster finds his creator and asks nothing more of him than to create a partner so that he could be less lonely. As a mixed character, the monster has no community or others with which to identify. Dr. Frankenstein finds the notion of a female monster to even more terrifying and reviling than his male creation, saying, “shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world?” (151). Frankenstein’s discomfort with a female monster has many implications, including a fear of female sexuality, as well as a fear of the two creature’s reproducing and creating proof of their relations. This discomfort with a complication to the feminine ideal is comparable to society’s discomfort with female mixed race, in that multi-racial women are portrayed to be exotic, yet tamable.The Doctor’s fear of his creature reproducing is also reflective of society’s fear of containing the non-dominant binary, of creating something which cannot be contained. By giving the creature his own life-force, his own ability to create life, he is giving up control of this new “race”.

The Doctor reluctantly agrees, yet never follows through on his promise to create a female. The creature is angered and forced to violence, which impels Dr. Frankenstein to devote his life to the destruction of his creation. He fails in his search, and his creature is last seen by the narrator walking into the cold northern tundra, “lost in darkness and distance” (239).

The title’s allusion to Prometheus compares Dr. Frankenstein’s creature to a heroic figure in Greek mythology responsible for providing humanity with fire, a intellectual and progressive achievement. Prometheus is created from clay, an origin not dissimilar to Frankenstein’s patchwork configuration. His punishment is tragic, as he is to be eternally tortured.

Frankenstein fits the trope of the tragic mulatto, never fitting into any culture, forever an outsider in his own world. Frankenstein suffers because no one is like him. No One exists who is the same as him, physically, culturally, or racially. Frankenstein is a gothic novel, acting as mirror to societal fears of of the unknown, and the abject. Just as humanity repeatedly finds the notion of fellow humans that look and sound different to be threatening, so Frankenstein is perceived as a menace.

Sophie Mol

This entry was posted in The God of Small Things and tagged Caucasian England female Indian Western white on by
The God of Small ThingsCharacter: Sophie Mol 

Source Text:  Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks,2008. Print.Entry Author:  Apollonia Roman

In the multi-layered novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Sophie Mol is the half Caucasian, half Indian nine year old visiting her two younger cousins in India. Even though there are several other tragedies in the book, including the molestation of her cousin Estha and the death of the “untouchable” Ammu, Sophie’s death is the locus from which the entire novel revolves, even though she is physically present in only a few chapters. While tragedies are covered up, Sophie’s rises to importance because is part white and has been raised in the west. Her Westernness makes her special in the novel. She is the only character who is referred to with any excitement by the others.

Sophie has been raised in England away from her biological Indian father, Chacko. Chacko uses his education at Oxford University in England to elevate himself in his Indian family, with whom he currently lives. He previously married  Sophie’s mother, Margaret Kochamma, to combine his most proud accomplishments: receiving an education and obtaining a white wife (Roy 114). Sophie and Margaret have come to visit Sophie’s Indian relatives in Ayemenem after the death of Sophie’s step-father, Joe, who she “loves most in d’world” (Roy 72). Joe is everything Chacko is not; he is “steady, solvent, thin…a wedge of light” and presumably white (Roy 118). Sophie idolizes him and regards him as her true father, while Chacko is just her less important “realdad” (Roy 72).  This gravitation towards a man so different in personality and race both elevates and distances Sophie from her Indian family and father.

Sophie’s only physical likeness to her “realdad” is a similar nose, “she had [her grandfather’s] nose waiting inside of hers” (Roy 68). This nose is sign of intelligence, “a moth-loving nose,” an “entomologist’s nose,” because it is something that gives educated Chacko pride (Roy 68). In contrast, Sophie’s white skin is described as much as her nose. This attribute is what differentiates her most from Chacko and his side of the family, binds her intimately with the white Margaret and biologically unrelated Joe. Her seven year old cousin Rahel describes her skin as precious, “she’s very delicate, if she gets dirty she’ll die” (Roy 100). After this statement, Rahel goes on to list Sophie’s other beautiful attributes: her hair, teeth, and legs. Yet, Sophie’s skin color takes precedence as her most impressive feature.

Every event in the novel, past, present, and future, refer, revolve, and lead up to the death of Sophie Mol. This is likely important because her “whiteness” makes her more valuable to her Indian family. “White” is mentioned nearly one hundred times throughout the novel, including references to white saris, lilies, insects, clouds, hair, etc. This imagery consistently reminds the reader that “white” is beautiful, fragile, and something to be treasured. Sophie Mol is treated as if she is such, even though she is obstinate, often speaking without reservations to her cousins. On page 73 Sophie declares that she doesn’t love her Indian family because she doesn’t know them. She is able to escape chastisement for infractions her cousins are not, such as being rude at the dinner table (Roy 153). The importance of Sophie’s fair skin eclipses her actions to her Indian family; she becomes more precious for her symbolically Western features makes her the crux of Roy’s critique on the problematic perception and reactions to class differences and reactions in the novel.

Escalator

This entry was posted in The Intuitionist and tagged non-human on by

 

The IntuitionistCharacter:  The Escalator

Source Text:  Whitehead, Colson. The Intuitionist. New York: Anchor, 1999.

Entry Author:  Alexandra Katechis

 

The escalator is an imagined “character” developed from Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist (1999). The escalator’s mixed race lineage is pulled from its nature as half stair and half elevator. In this poem, the escalator is personified in order to parse out the available material in the escalator’s status as mixed race. The poem explores the ability of the escalator to exist as stairs (black) but never achieve the status of elevator (white). The hardest task of the poem is to fulfill the standards of legitimacy as mixed race. Is it fair to say that the escalator is mixed race? Does the metaphor translate? If so, do we simply hear the confident and militant voice of Huey diagnosing the escalator with a case of “afro denial”?

 

Escalator

Ascension abbreviated: auto-manglia of up;

Brokering the blasphemously black (broken)

Crawl toward climax; we collapse like a dead star.

Drudgery of metal monotony, dour doldrum drip:

Exotica of oneness, twoness, sameness—

Flora of this frightfully frigid dream.

Go and do not come back to me. Take this

Hysteria of homogeneity,

Intoxication with inclination and precipice,

Just bad luck. Otherwise, let me

Know you are still there, your knuckles of

Laudanum, bitterest lullabies of a long wet tongue—

Melancholia, my eternal diagonal alias.

Naked as the word, the world, I rise, I rust.

Offal in the organism optimized by a

Plastic parasite for usefulness. If I

Quit this quixotic business of belonging—

Radically, selfishly—to two realities at once, in my

Stillness I am halved, not splendidly split but

Torturously torn, embers of a tremendous spark.

Usward is our only up.

Verticality—venom and verve—

Wanton, wistful mistress of whispers and hums—

Executioner and executor of the exquisite wish. Can

You bear what dreams may come?
Zenith promises only down.

Caliban

This entry was posted in William Shakespeare: Collected Works and tagged animal beast devil human male man on by

 

CalibanCharacter:  Caliban

Source Text:  Shakespeare, William. “The Tempest.” William Shakespeare: Collected Works. Ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. London: Wordsworth Editions, 1996. 1135-1159.

Entry Author:  Alexandra Katechis

 

Caliban of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1610-1611) is the half human and half beast native to the island upon Prospero and his daughter have adopted. This poem strives to emphasize the ambiguity of Caliban’s parentage. The poem also explores the many forms he might appear as (man, beast, animal, devil). The point of view will be first person, so that the speaker can draw the reader into the pain of being reviled and enslaved as a result of physical difference and suspected inferiority. Additionally, this poem attempts to emphasize the struggle between Caliban’s inner humanity and outer bestiality. Caliban’s aggressive voice is evoked in order to fully flesh out this sense of injustice which is so central to his humanness.

 

Caliban

Acerbic article of Algiers, I am the son of Sycorax, antithesis of Ariel, and yet

Brother. What family has not forsaken me, banished and abandoned me in basest beastly

Condition, which does cull cruelty from civility. When did censure reach such consensus?

Duke of Milan, Prospero, doest thou attend me? Thy crippled devil did befriend thee. This

Eden I ennobled onto you, you, who conducts the eulogy of my only claim to the

Flesh of this Earth. Foiled by my own manhood, which did enflame thy eyes before fruition:

Godless, ghastly love for Miranda, o gracious nonpareil, who gave me voice to groan,

Howl, hatch into this hostile realm. What hellfire has my humanity bought? Master,

Imposter, sinuous ivy of incantation and vile thought, ignominy of my inheritance, my isle.

Jealousy betrays this jape of justice, which does lengthen my jailor’s sentence of solitude.

King and keeper of my soul, strengthen the knot of thy goddess who does tempt me. Thy

Leal servant licks at lust and knows no limit to its loathsome breath which you have lent me:

Mooncalf monster, cry out the wicked; only good men mark my root in our maker’s mind. A

Naked native truth to which I am nailed, bound nose to navel by a plague of nymphs. The

Orphan obeys, instrument of this diabolical orchestra of occult hymns. And so

Perdition is my immortality, part served on this pelagic stage, the rest in pandemonium’s pit.

Quiet quivers of mine own heart do sometimes feign forgiveness, quintessence of thy fool’s wit.

Reason can no longer rebuke the rabid refrain of my repugnance, reborn the same in every

Strain of this savage’s story. Spirit, sprite, and simplest man: subject to the sorcerer of quill,

Trick and thrill, the madman’s slight of hand. Sing out my threnody, tale of a tyrannical torment.

Ugly underworld, ubiquitous cacophony, and my prison, molded from past paradise by the

Villain who knows naught else but to rule and part. I am the victim of the minister of fate

Whose rapture is my worldly woe, whose rejoice is bitterest curse and weakest foe.

Exculpate me, or else scorn this half-worn existence as do all others who drink his poison ink.

Yesterday’s heart can no more be broken. I have no other.

Zealotry has no parallel, no pardon.