key quotations Flashcards
“A new species would bless me…”
“… as its creator and source”
(semantic field of religion - “creator”, “source”)
“I pursued nature to her hiding-places. …”
“Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil…?”
(“secret toil” - shameful and unlawful activity)
‘mock the stupendous mechanism…’ (Mary Shelley’s Author’s Introduction, 1831)
‘…of the Creator of the world.’
“Seek happiness in tranquility,…”
“… and avoid ambition.”
“Are you then so easily…”
“…turned from your design?”
(noun ‘design’ emphasises that Victor views ambition as a part of ‘design’, something that cannot and should not be stifled and is innately human. this ultimately emphasises the idea that Victor never learns from his mistakes, and perhaps sees a justification in them.)
Lodge ‘names are never neutral. They always…’
‘…signify, if it is only ordinariness’
“I preferred glory to…”
“… every enticement that wealth placed in my path.”
(“glory”, religious connotations)
“the inestimable benefit…” - Walton
“… which I shall confer on all mankind…”
“he is thus noble…” (Walton about Victor)
“… and godlike in ruin!”
“I am malicious…”
“…because I am miserable”
“my own spirit…” (Victor on doubling w/ monster)
“… let loose from the grave”
“men appear to me as…” (Elizabeth after Justine is executed)
“monsters thirsting for each other’s blood.”
‘We saw many ruined castles standing on the edge of precipes, …’
‘… surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible.’
“Man, you shall repent…”
“… of the injuries you inflict.”
‘… the tempest, …’
‘… so beautiful yet terrific’
‘… in a scene so beautiful and heavenly… I was tempted to…’
‘… plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities’
“All praises bestowed on her I received…”
“… as made to a possession of my own.” (Victor about Elizabeth)
“No human being could have passed…”
“… a happier childhood than myself.”
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by…
such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin.”
- describes humanity’s most beautiful sentiments and fatal flaws in a nutshell. how comforting yet concerning that we still face the same fears and pleasures of a time gone by now.
the monster’s rapid and effortless violence
grasping William’s throat and ‘in a moment he lays dead’. choice of a child as the first victim of the monster makes this act even more heinous and terrifying (typically gothic and gruesome fashion)
“my enemy is not…”
“… invulnerable” - this profound realisation leads to the oppressed overcoming the oppressor
“Let me see that I excite the…”
“… sympathy of some existing thing” - beneath lofty rhetoric is a cry of pain that all readers can understand. Shelley activates her readers’ sympathy for an unlikely candidate of pathos, thereby fulfilling, beyond the page, the monster’s request.
parallel syntax and pre-emptive phrasing
“I demand […] but it is all”
“It is true […] but on that account”
characterise the monster as a reasonable, composed character despite the emotional turmoil he feels within.
progress and innovation being described in terms of light
‘country of eternal light’
Victor’s burst of insight as ‘a sudden light’
