Bullet points: Chapter 13 on Frankenstein
- Created by: velvetire
- Created on: 11-02-16 12:35
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- Shelley advances two concepts in this chapter that are central to the novel; one is the use of knowledge for good purposes, to know the world around you; and, the second is to question the essence of man's good and evil tendencies
- Shelley wonders how man can be forever changed by the simple act of aacquiring information about his world
- Shelley seeks to find out how man is a pardox of contrasts
- He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike
- She is questioning the existence of good and evil present in all men
- The concept that crops up from the sotry of Adam in the Bible and one of the questions posed by Milton in Paradise Lost
- As winter thaws into spring, the monster notices that the cottagers, particularly Felxi, seem unhappy
- A beautiful woman in a dark dress and veil arrives at the cottage of horseback and asks to see Felix
- Felix becoems ecstatic the moment he sees her
- The woman, who does not speak the language of the cottagers, is named Safie
- She moves into the cottage, and the mood of the household immedietly brightens
- As Safie learns the langauge of the cottagers, so does the monster
- Now able to speak and understand the langauge perfectly, the monster learns about human society by listening to the cottagers' conversations
- Reflecting on his own situation, he realises that he is deformed and alone
- He also learns about the pleasures and obligations of the family and of human relations in general, which deepns the agony of his own isolation
- The subplot of Safie and the cottagers adds yet another set of voices to the novel
- Their story is transmitted from the cottagers to the monster, from the monster to Victor, from Victor to Walton, and from Walton to his sister, at which point the reader finally gains access to it
- The layering of stories within stories enables the reworking of familiar ideas in new contexts
- The monster, whoses solitude stems from being the only creature of his kind in existence and from being shunned by humanity, senses this quality of being different most powerfully
- His deformity, his ability to survuve extreme conditions, and the grotesque circumstances of his creation all serve to mark him as the ultimate outsider
- Victor, too, is an outsider, as his awful secret seperates him from friends, family and the rest of society
- In the subplot of the cottagers, this idea recurs in the figures of both Safie and her father
- His otherness as a Muslim Turk in…
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