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1st 6 weeks 1st Semester

Above: Another old book cover

Above: Igor from Mel Brooks' adaptation of the movie. 

Monday February 4th - Friday February 8th

Due THIS lab day:  Continued reading of Frankenstein. Test in class on 1-7. Be prepared and read! Bring your book with you!

In-Class:  Test on what has been read so far in the novel, Frankenstein. The first test will include all chapters 1-7, including the letters. 

We will continue discussing the novel and writing notes on the chapters.  We will read the section where Frankenstein meets his monster. Be sure your book is in class with you!

We will also look at a Web site that explains the origination of Frankenstein, etc.

Assignments: Continue reading Frankenstein. Read chapters 8-14 in the novel. Test on these chapters next lab day. 

Please TYPE one page explaining what happened to Justine and WHY Victor could not say the truth about what really happened. How does Victor then see the monster, and what are the first words they share with each other? Bring this with you upon return from break. 

Links: Frankenstein as it relates to other literature

         http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/frankhome.html

Background Information: "In March, 1815, Mary Shelley dreamed of her dead infant daughter held before a fire, rubbed vigorously, and restored to life. At the time, scientists would not have wholly dismissed such a possibility. Could the dead be brought back to life? Could life arise spontaneously from inorganic matter? Physicians of the day treated such questions seriously--as the treatises they wrote, the methods they employed, and the contrivances they built all testify.

During the 1790s, Italian physician Luigi Galvani demonstrated what we now understand to be the electrical basis of nerve impulses when he made frog muscles twitch by jolting them with a spark from an electrostatic machine. When Frankenstein was published, however, the word galvanism implied the release, through electricity, of mysterious life forces. "Perhaps," Mary Shelley recalled of her talks with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, "a corpse would be reanimated; galvanism had given token of such things."

To make his creature, Victor Frankenstein "dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave" and frequented dissecting rooms and slaughterhouses. In Mary Shelley's day, as in our own, the healthy human form delighted and intrigued artists, physicians, and anatomists. But corpses, decaying tissue, and body parts stirred almost universal disgust. Alive or dead, whole or in pieces, human bodies arouse strong emotion--and account for part of Frankenstein's enduring hold on us."

At this point in the novel, Victor makes his first gruesome discovery that the Monster may have attacked and killed little William, the Frankenstein family's youngest child. The blame is placed on Justine Moritz, a good friend of Elizabeth's, and she in turn is executed. Despite the fact that Victor knows she is innocent, he cannot state this to anyone as he fears no one would believe him and call him a madman. Victor then blames himself for his youngest brother's death, as well as Justine's execution. What point is the monster trying to make in the killing of these innocent people? Remember, a few years have passed now since Victor has seen his creation, so maybe his monster has suffered bad consequences and wishes to take his anger out on Victor. Why?