Madness

Question 1

What is the comparison for point 1?

Answer 1

1.) narrative voice and structure:

THT: Stream of consciousness and temporal ambiguity:
- ‘you’ll have to forgive me. I am a refugee from the past… marooned in the 21st century like a white Russian drinking tea in Paris… I wander back’

Frankenstein:
self conscious narration, recounting narrative allows for a more rationalised presentation:
- Contained within Walton’s narrative

• ‘I saw nothing but the glimmer of two eyes that gleamed upon me’
• CONTEXT: Gothic= spiritual uncertainty and engagement with Gothic imagery= element of supernatural

Question 2

What is the comparison for point 2?

Answer 2

2.) the motif of illusion and reality:

• ‘I was possessed by a kind of nightmare. I felt the fiend’s grasp in my neck. Its groans and cries rung in my ear’
• ‘image of Clerval, ghastly and murdered’
  Context: supernatural being as manifestation of guilt
  = Hamlet?

Context: with a decline of religion, the Gothic as an attempt to find new adequate ways to deal with visceral feelings concerning death, evil and violence

Frankenstein seems aware that these are illusions, whereas Offred slips fluidly in between hallucinations

• ‘the clock in the hall ticks… Serena lights another cigarette. I get into the car. It’s Saturday morning. It’s September. We still have a car’
• escapism, embodies a more positive quality compared to horror evoked in Frankenstein

Context: the alarming effects of constant surveillance on the individual’s ability to remain compos mentis

• dystopian genre
• oppressive regimes that existed during 1980s= USSR

Question 3

What is the comparison for point 3?

Answer 3

3. ) guilt and paranoia ( more self-induced in Frankenstein)
   - ‘I feel drugged. I consider this. Maybe they are drugging me. Maybe the life I think I’m leading is a paranoid delusion’

• ‘they’ = result of external force
  Context: the use of substances to control and placate citizens is an aspect of the dystopian genre, autocratic regime of Orwell’s 1984
• Context: threat of faceless regime= USSR and Maoist China

In Frankenstein he exacerbates his own madness:

’ I feared that I should be considered mad, and this forever chained my tongue’

• self induced delusion and refusal to confront gravity of his actions

Context: adherence to Gothic genre through depiction of violence= rhetoric of guilt in French revolution?

Question 4

What are the 3 comparisons I want to make for this topic?

Answer 4

1. ) narrative voice and structure- stream of consciousness versus contained and rational
2. ) illusion and reality
3. ) guilt and paranoia - self induced in F and from external force in THT