The Tempest, Act 1

This week, we started officially studying and reading the Tempest by William Shakespeare. After reading the first act, I noticed several things about the main theme of the tale. This story mainly revolves around getting and maintaing authority through any means neccesary and the role of power in human dynamics. The beginning events of the Tempest with the ship baring important characters being shipwrecked illustrates the importance many people place on government based authority and how that when faced with natural and supernatural powers, the authority the nobles thought they had proves to be an illusion. When faced with power based in actual abillity to control worldly events, their place in society crumbles, as shown by the Bo'Sun who disregards the nobles ranks. The opposite of this is the power that Prospero wields in the play. Through mortal means, Prospero manages to assert his authority over the spirit Ariel and keeps her in servitude. By doing this he gains access to a large amount of supernatural powers with the ability to effect real life events. He does this and illustrates the relationship between authority and tangible power and the fact that authority only extends as far a people are willing to acknowledge or accept it.

Some Poetry and Stuff, Mostly About Nature

Usually my only forms of self expression come from visual based interpretation of various junk floatin' about in the old melon, so I thought I'd try my hand at some poetry which I don't normally do. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, but its probably atrocious. Regardless I thought I'd post some stuff inspired by some thinking I've been doing, and besides, that's the only way to Carnegie Hall.

ageless growth strives forth

endless grey wanders unchecked

a balance unfound

unchecked lightning fills

ephemeral will hastens

parched lips to false balms

unrealized paths wait

unrecognized power is

infinity bound

shrieking lust cries out

always man made herds chorus

a song to ground me

endless palettes used

unseen complexity shapes 

an uncherished plane

mirror the warped light

echo the cracked foundation

the island of man

oasis poisoned founding

the race that chases us past our meaning

a loneliness newly minted

A language, a cycle, a pattern, a path:

identical rituals the pushing particles forge, 

endlessly interpretable in entropy and math,

but the droplet seldom sees as it etches the gorge,

the void churns on.

My Thoughts on Frankenstein

 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is fundamentally about the tragic relationship the creature has with his creator, Victor, mirroring biblical humanity and exploring the idea of morality and divine limits. The heavy biblical allusions contrast Shelley's themes of secular morality and scientific limitations. Initially, the book focuses on the concept of knowledge without the restriction of morality or religion as the scope and consequences of Victor's obsessive drive towards the imitation of god are revealed. He is shown to be a reckless and selfish person in the process and his actions go on to harm a number of people closely related to him and drive an innocent being to rage-fueled insanity. The monster begins life with a human mind unshaped by traditional education or societal values. Immediately after attaining consciousness he begins piecing together his understanding of the world and strives to better know the, to him, divine-like beings inhabiting civilization as he encounters it. Unfounded by cultural preconceptions and dogmas, the monster develops his own identity and morality based on his limited experiences of what it means to be human, based around his desires for love and companionship and observation of human society. Soon he encounters literature that causes him to view his own circumstances in a more biblical manner. He begins to view himself in terms of the cast down Satan and the exiled Adam. The intense otherness and desire for sympathetic human interaction drive him to try and place himself in the scope of humanity and the divine in an attempt to assimilate himself into a world he hardly understands to satisfy the very human urges he feels. After he is driven from his overlooked pocket in society, he discovers a journal of Victor's and the details of his own origin. This changes him from an optimistically exploring his role in the world to vengefully seeking the downfall of his creator who he can now identify. Here the god-creation dynamic takes hold and warps the monster's worldview. The monster feels hatred towards Victor for his reckless bestowing of life while struggling to deal with the awe he feels at the one who gave him life. He desperately desires re-compensation from Victor for the misery he experiences early on in his life do to his estrangement from society, and when that fails he works to bring Victor down to his own level. Ultimately the story resolves with both their deaths following the death of everyone close in Victor's life. Shelley's message encompasses the idea of morality based on logic and transcendent values and free from preconceptions and dogma based around the idea of an all powerful creator and religion. Conversely it details the tragic consequences of knowledge unrestrained by morality and of humans motivated personal desires separate from the benefit of others. Ultimately, it is about the human mind to follow paths of morality and contemplate the greater mysteries within the influence of society and in isolation and the potentially tragic consequences connected to it.

A Monstrous Adolescence, My Look at chapters 13 & 14

Haphazardly thrown into the world as a full grown being, Frankenstein's monster spends much of the first moments of life discovering the wonders of the world seen through virgin eyes. However, due to his inherent intelligence and superhuman flexibility, the monster soon masters the elements of basic survival that any wild beast is forced to learn. His first contact with human society and the species in person comes from incidental encounters early on in his life where he wanders through a hamlet and several cottages. He instantly learns of their fear of his monstrous appearance and the human tendency towards violence. These experiences are soon pushed to the back of his mind as the will to survive fuels his earliest mental development. With the satiation of his basest needs, the monster's bemused pondering returns to the strange creatures he had encountered. Driven by the deep seated need to learn more on the subject, the monster creates a hidey-hole through which to observe the De Lacey family, and dissect their behavior. By becoming obsessed with the knowledge he can glean of their familial relationship, the monster illuminates the very human desire he possesses within his superior brain to feel accepted by society and a close knit family group. By exposing this urge, the monster displays his own similarity to a human adolescent. Like an adolescent, his genuinely positive desire to be an accepted member of the De Lacey family, the monster illuminates his own potential to be an empathetic, productive member of society. And like and adolescent, he demonstrates his own innate mortal naivete about the world through his method and attempt at communication with the De Lacey father. In these ways the monster shows that he is pre-occupied with many of the same topics that dominate the lives of adolescents, proving that he follows a parallel, if not altered and accelerated, path to a genuine and accepted human intelligence.

Rationalization

When Victor first comes back to his hometown of Geneva after the mysterious death of his brother William, Victor comes into the knowledge that the murder was most likely perpetrated by the monster of his own creation. Nearly simultaneously, a servant and family-friend/surrogate of the Frankenstein's is accused and arrested for the selfsame crime. While Victor stays quiet and sits on the vital knowledge he has, the friend, Justine, is falsely convicted and executed for the crime. While this is all happening Victor is telling himself that nothing he could say or do would convince the judges of her innocence beyond what he believed would be justly revealed. This is not the case. Victor's attempts at rationalization simply displays his continuing inability to take any sort of responsibility for his crime against nature or his towering hubris. Furthermore, his delusion only serves as a way that he can deny that he was ever wrong in the first place to attempt such a feat or that the realm of empirical science is all encompassing. It is an attempt to distance himself from any liability and create a dynamic to continue his falsity and not succumb to his guilt.

Journal Entry on Rationalization, Physiognomy, and Prometheus

When comparing the mythological story of the titan Prometheus and the romantic tale of Frankenstein, several striking similarities stand out to an objective viewer. Both the goal that obsessively drives them to their doom and the manner they go about achieving their ends link Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the titan Prometheus. Both attempt to condense down the spark of sentience and bestow it in any manner they choose without the conveyance of the greatest power, both end up harming the receivers of their "gift', and both pay the most dire of prices for their hubris. Beyond both's overwhelming desire to create thoughtful human life, imperfectly, the manner they go about their deed is steeped in the utmost of hubris. While Frankenstein attempts to recreate the mechanics and drive of life with the rudiments of biology, chemistry, and technology Prometheus attempts to pass all the metaphysical potential that we as humans posses when staring into the face of the universe in a petty prank spawned to spite his cousins. Both attempt to go beyond their own limitations and bestow the spark of the divine in an imperfect manner and both pay the ultimate price for their hubris.