Highwaybaby

What to study for?

2011-05-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

This is the question many youngsters make themselves in current Spain. They have been said to prepare for the future, to gain academic skills to face life on equal terms with regards to* other young Europeans, but the economic crisis has taken all hopes away.

When the Spanish Government explained that the difficult times were not something to be afraid of, either they were underestimating the situation or they simple became exceeded by the big problem. Only when the EU obliged Spain to cut off services to face the crisis did the average citizen realize that we were really having serious trouble down there.
The country has adopted some restrictive measures to reduce the public debt, such as increasing the retirement age up to 67. Meanwhile, young people find it difficult to get either a steady or a provisional job. Some make fun of the situation. Typical jokes include elderly people failing at work because of their advanced age or the contradiction of having young healthy Spaniards sunbathing on Mondays while their parents or grandparents pass away working.
Things are difficult for everybody, but they turn out to be especially discouraging for teenage people. They try hard to get good marks and job titles, but at the same time they know that a university degree does not imply a permanent job, not even a temporary one.
In any case, being things as they are, it is better to spend time on academic matters rather than on the dole queue. If life is made of repeated periods of prosperity and poverty, crisis will end. The question is when

In what way can consumers change their eating habits?

2010-09-27T09:16:00.001-07:00

To begin with, people can only change their diet if they really want to. The worst problems when facing food habits are quality and frequency rather than quantity. If a person wants to keep healthy and fit, he should worry about what to take and when instead of how much.

The point is, we should eat a balanced diet, with plenty of vegetables, a good deal of fruit, quite a lot of fish,enough milk and dairy products, some pasta, bread and rice, some meat and a bit of fat and sugar from crisps, chocolates and candies. In fact, obesity and weight-gain have much to do with an abuse of fattening food, such as processed food, whereas natural products are normally healthier.
Apart from the kind of food, it is also important to eat five times a day, and to avoid doing it between meals. A heavy breakfast and a decreasing quantity to reach a light supper before going to sleep would be highly beneficial, too.
To sum up, eating habits need more balance than drastic changes. After all, keeping fit is more a matter of continuity than one of punctual sacrifice.

Nevermore anniversary

2010-09-11T08:40:00.001-07:00

It’´s been nine years since the proud America saw its twin economic symbol fall down after an indiscriminate funereal flight to the very heart of hell. Even far across the ocean, we people in Western countries understood that life would never be the same for anybody. Victims threw themselves into a neverendind void as a less grievous alternative to flesh-burning in the World Trade Center. Firefighters died under a thick layer of debris and ashes. Ordinary people couldn’t understand what they had done to deserve that massive display of hatred and free violence.

For nine years some have identified islamic terrorism with islamism. A dangerous overgeneralization. It’s not a secret that a lot of radical muslims consider capitalism as the mother of all evils. For those, who mistankenly compared the highly flawed American Way of Life with the horrendous unbelievers, the 11S attacks were slightly less than divine justice. Very risky way of monopolizing cosmic truth.

In any case, some of the fault, want it or not, was in the interventionist policy of the US during contemporanean times, justifying invasions, abusive treaties and unilateral wars as a necessary measure to maintain world peace.
Capitalism will be conquering the globe for at last two hundred years more and we all will be resting on heaven or burning in hell, but it would be nice to see from the deep blackness of the abyss or the cotton-like clouds over the heads that everybody, western and eastern, anglosaxons and arabs, atheists and fanatics, has learnt to respect other viewpoints, other symbols and other ways of searching spiritual happiness. At the end, it’s only a question of tolerance.

The Twilight Avenger gets a name

2010-08-14T02:19:00.001-07:00

Frampton Compton undressed lazily at dawn. The patrol had been intense and exciting. It was time to send the superhero to bed and the supercostume to the washing machine. Only two hours to alarm ring. He had to decide between sleeping or having breakfast. “Bellyman” opted for resting and eliminating the body excuse for that horrible nick. The double-life man read briefly a The Mighty Avengers Marvel Comic and glimpsed a New York City postcard with the word “twilight” written on it. He slept on a brand new name: A vindicator...only working at night...masked hero... This was it! The Twilight Avenger. Spectacular. Sublime. Terrific. The bad guys’ lash. Like a kick in the very face. But he had to start doing some exercise: Sit-ups and push-ups. And no more cocoa cream with honey and peanut butter spread on the doughnuts. But the clock woke up both his body and his stomach. Maybe tomorrow. After dinner. Or supper.

"Who are you?"

2010-07-13T06:52:00.001-07:00

A frightened girls scarcely escapes a bunch of evil men. She pants, gasps, puffs and reaches a saviour corner. But, when she goes round, it literally and figuratively turns to be a dead line. The lovely girl nearly faints.The badmen stop running and begin walking solemnly. One takes out a pen knife; another the belt; the other ones a camera, a bloody-dripping syringe and a microphone. Then he appears: top of the roof, flying cape, dumb face and yellow jumping boots. He cries “Leave her alone or confront me, you of the evil stars, you worst than toothache.”

The gang look at each other until the masked hero jumps down to the blind alley. The pen knife guy receives spray in the eyes, and an expansion shock from the hairdrier-like pistol knocks the others out.

- Who are you? - says the relieved woman.
- Well, er, I, uh, I haven’t thought about a name or something. ¿What about “Heroman”?
- No, no, no. This is old-fashioned and vulgar. “Bellyman”. That’s it.
- What?
- “Bellyman”. It really fits you.
- Fuck off, you gust of disgust!
- But I only...

But the dull face saviour is long gone through igniting jets from his belt. He’s considering that “maybe I should replace this old tight costume. It makes me fat although I try to hide my float. And what the hell should I use as a nickname? The Vindicator Avenger? The Thief Eater? American Power? I will sleep on it. “Bellyman!” Fatty seal”.

Zinedine Zidane and the Gods of football

2010-07-07T12:26:00.001-07:00

The 2006 Football World Cup Final was going to be the topping in the Algerian French player’s retirement cake, but instead, it cast the midfielder into the mists of back door goodbye, and Marco Materazzi’s chest into the bottom of French desperation.

Zidane was a genius in footballistic life and the perfect gentleman in public affairs. Honest, kind, goodhearted, but also hotblooded and moody, his career was full of brilliant plays and some shameful aggressions. Knowing that and being Italian, Materazzi exploited his dirty tricks against the core of the “bleus”. Zidane’s sending-off was not unfair, just the opposite, the French player really far deserved it. The point is, what kind of noble justice is it which allows the subterranean game to make a good person lose his tempers and –literally- his head?
Zinedine was worth a different end, maybe a Hollywoodian one, in which he scored the winning goal on the very last second of the extra time or the definite penalty in the final round. Almost nobody retires on top of the business. It football, at least, I cannot remember many. People believe in a very romantic sense of justice and rights and in an omnipresent God of football who, from time to time, put things in their right place. When the over-competitive Italy defeated the old France, he had to be on holiday watching a different TV channel. But this is life and top sport was not going to be much different. Zidane was fired because he couldn’t resist provocation or punish back in a slightly more indifferent manner.
This final blemish didn’t prevent the Algerian from receiving the Golden Ball award for the tournament, maybe because he was recognised not only for that World Cup merits, which were not very impressive, but for his complete career. At the end, people remembered him as a delicatessen with a mild sour taste at the end.

Coming back

2010-07-06T10:49:00.001-07:00

I promised to come back if something happened. Well, I still don't know if "that thing" will occur, but I have decided to return anyway, whatever happens about my commitment.
I didn't want to continue this blog as, being a teacher of English, I didn't want to commit unforgivable errors. I will, but I don't care now. I won't allow self-correction to prevent my thoughts from pervading the webworld. So this is a sort of rebirth, and I'm happy about my second "web son".

Aphorisms

2009-06-09T14:04:00.000-07:00

ENGLISH IS EVERYWHERE. EVEN IN YOU.

I’VE LEARNT MORE FROM YOU THAN YOU FROM ME.

READING FEEDS THE SOUL. GET FAT.

THE ONLY THING I DON’T LIKE ABOUT YOU IS YOUR DEPARTURE.

LIFE IS NOT FAIR. I THINK IT’S MORE BLONDE-LIKE.

BE WISER IN FUTURE, BECAUSE YOU CAN’T BE NICER.

THERE ARE TWO THINGS I USUALLY MISS: THE BUS AND YOU.

SOME THINGS ARE NOT TAUGHT IN BOOKS BUT IN PEOPLE LIKE YOU.

MY LIFE IS DIVIDED IN TWO: BEFORE AND AFTER YOU.

I TRIED TO REMEMBER YOUR FAULTS BUT I FORGOT ALL.

AS FOR TEACHING, YOU MAKE IT SPECIAL.

A GOOD STUDENT MAKES A TEACHER EXCELLENT.

I LIKE THE WAY YOU SMILE IN ENGLISH.

WHEN I MET YOU I THOUGHT LIFE WAS WONDERFUL. NOW I’M SURE.

WORKING WITH YOU WAS NOT A JOB.

IF I EVER GOT ANGRY WITH YOU, IT WAS JUST TO GET CLOSER AFTERWARDS.

FRIENDSHIP IS A BOAT WHICH NEVER SINKS.

YOU ARE LIKE SACCHARIN: YOU MAKE LIFE SWEETER BUT AREN’T FATTENING.
AN ENVIOUS MAN SEES WHERE YOU ARE, NOT WHERE YOU COME FROM.

Memories

2009-02-18T10:56:00.001-08:00

Memories.
They are here to stay
To remind you of their pain over you
To make you cry
To make you prisoner of the past
To minimize the success of your insignificant present
To make you trip and fall
To kill you innerly.
Nostalgia is an old girlfriend
You don’t want to greet on your way
But she always bumps into you
Like an inkblot painted in the sky
Like a sadness you want to liven up
But that finishes your strength up
And gets you drunk of sorrow.

Embedded in life

2008-12-31T08:04:00.000-08:00

It’s not that I’m gonna criticize the advantages of spare time. Everybody knows how paramount it is in our society. The point is, if you take away routines (I mean, rest, work, eating, children care, cooking, nature calls, communicating, housework), all you’ve got is a couple of hours per day, maybe four if you’re lucky and woman (if you’re a man forget about completing housework easily, it always takes three more times than a female).
The concept free time is very deceitful. You think you can do whatever you want, but, on second thoughts, your choice is overwhelmingly restricted. Try to be alone in the outside. Either you look for a deep enough long-lost cave or a steep mountain where, if it’s under x metres, you are not allowed to camp. Living in the wild is also forbidden. Everything is somebody’s and you can’t take, sleep on, use or eat it. To make love, do sports, take drugs, draw graffiti, be naked, swim, smoke or drink spirits you need your own gold-paid tight flat or a specific space-for building. Some of them can’t even be done in the street. Have you ever tried to go jogging nude when smoking a joint? What about every teenager’s ultimate dream nowadays: Having sexual intercourse at the same time as drinking a vodka with lemon without paying for room or pub fare?
Of course some laws and precepts are here to prevent everybody’s rights and blah, blah, blah, with liberty and justice for all, etc… That’s right, to a certain extent. Have you noticed that you must pay for everything? There are taxes on commercial products, on blank DVD’s, tobbaco, pictures, raw materials, manufactures. If you earn money you have to pay for it. If you’re lucky enough to win the lottery you are to share with the State. If you get it gambling a previous part of your profits have gone to the coffers of the Government. If you decide to give it freely to your best friend or relative or a tramp you find under a built-with-your-money bridge, you are committing a crime. The procedure is to declare your donation and pay a tax for it. Otherwise you could be investigated and fined.
Suppose your granny has been giving you a weekly tip of € 5 since you were born. Now you’re thirty and therefore you have € 9800. The State may ask you about the origin of that illegal, black money! If you use other people’s words without quoting, this is plagiarism. Copy a music CD and you’ll be a criminal. Create a brand and give it a name, only to discover that the name is registered by someone else and you are not allowed to use it in commercial terms.
I accept civilization implies you are not burying a hatchet into your neighbour’s brain, but from that aggression to not being able to step on a relaxing prairie or tranquil orchard because they belong to a proprietor I think there are thousands of restrictions we all might not need. The definite symptom of failed capitalism is homeless. In a world where you are what you possess, they are nothing. They can’t even rest on the pavement or live. The only thing they let you do in the street is walking or staying in a bench (sitting, never sleeping). The wild nature is no longer rivers and forests. Right now the wildest sides are people’s attitude about goods and possessions. How long until the poor crowd decide to go on strike against poverty, to abolish capitalism, to hang the rich, to share equally? Maybe tirany in The Third World is a failure of underdevelopment, but bums in metropolis is a hint of the same wicked disease.

Wuthering Heights

2008-12-30T05:16:00.000-08:00

Wuthering heights was written and published in 1847 by Ellis Bell, the pseudonym of Emily Bronte and, although it did not get much success in those days, the book gradually gained favourable critiques and generalized admiration until being considered as one of the peaks of the English literature. Far from falling into the oblivion, its main themes are nowadays fresher and more enrapturing than ever. The strange structure of the novel and its unique treatment of characters and facts among the Victorian works make Wuthering Heights even rarer and unmistakeable. Besides, subsequent film adaptations have contributed to increase considerably its fame, though losing part of its intensity and natural beauty.
Emily Bronte combined the poetical description of her Yorkshire moors with the harsh and vigorous portrait of her deep characters. Their strong feelings, absurd ambiguity and passionate determination make them more believable than any real person of the Victorian age. And the continuous transgression of moral rules and civic behaviour gives accurate account of the nineteenth century society and its values.
The story is centred around a well-off family and their tense relation, especially the children, with Heathcliff, an orphan brought by the head of the household. Although Catherine, surpassed the first fit of jealousy, gets on with him, her brother Hindley despises Heathcliff and regards him as a rival for his properties, facilities and especially relatives´ affection. Humiliated over and over again, Heathcliff leaves an actual enemy and an unreachable lover and escapes to a better life only to come back and take excessive revenge upon the two brothers. After an existence full of hatred and grief, and having caused the same to all the family on purpose, Heathcliff finds peace only in death. The happy ending, however, is fulfilled by the descendants of Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw.
The structural division of chapters obeys to crucial scenes and relevant episodes and can embrace a few moments or several days or weeks. Although there are thirty-four chapters the chronological order is not pursued. The description of facts is related by a number or narrators, sometimes one into the narration of another, by means of oral speech or through letters or diaries. So, the external narrator is Mr. Lockwood, who visits Wuthering Heights and becomes intrigued by the inhospitality of their inhabitants and the statements of Catherine Heathcliff Linton Earnshaw´s improvised diary. Then the complete plot from the beginning to the end is narrated by Ellen Dean, the former nurse of Catherine and actual witness of all the facts concerning Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange in the last forty years. Mrs. Dean compilates all the information through own observation and confidences from Heathcliff, Catherine, Isabella, Zillah and Miss Cathy.
The relationships between characters are always marked by triangular associations here and there: The first triangle is composed of Hindley, Catherine and Heathcliff. The atmosphere is of wild beauty and fierce rejection. Another one is formed by Isabella, Edgar and Catherine, where extreme refinement and whimful life cover the period. Other triangular relations are Edgar-Heathcliff-Catherine, marked by tender or wild love, and Isabella-Hindley-Heathcliff, condensed in hatred and bitterness.
The second generation with Linton, Miss Cathy and Hareton, and the surviving Edgar and the imperturbable Heathcliff are again doomed with triangular coexistence with one –or two- disturbing member playing havoc. Although generally let behind the main action, Nelly Dean configurates the most lovely triangle with Edgar and Miss Cathy. Others, like Linton-Miss Cathy-Hareton´s, are full of grief and desperation. The most evil one consists of Heathcliff-Miss Cathy-Linton, where fear, repulsion, illness, manipulation and grief embody the scene. The last triangular relationship oozes hope: a death-waiting Heathcliff stares calmly at Catherine´s spirit forgetting all the undergone sufferings while Hareton gains knowledge to be enough for Cathy and she loves him beyond his rude appearance and modals. Other minor social triangles can be established, but what is really remarkable is the position of Nelly witnessing and sometimes softening the awkward feelings between the inhabitants of both Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights.
The central character of the novel is Heathcliff. Not by chance he appears first on the fifth line of the book and dies two pages before the end. The orphan embodies all the truly passions of human nature in a savage mood, approaching raw goodness and uprightness and incomprehensibly diabolical evil and cold rage later. The introduction of Heathcliff at the Heights is significant and fateful: His appearance implies the loss of Hindley and Catherine presents –a fiddle and a whip- and symbolizes future usurpation and unconcious destruction. Although his physical and psychical strengh are never to abandon him, nobility and kindness will not long so far. As a child, Heathcliff is cold, insensible and becomes the favourite of Old Mr. Earnshaw, maybe in resemblance with his own severity.
Heathcliff´s increasing hatred against Hindley grows from humiliation and poverty and is legitimate because he doesn´t lose his sense of justice. The real wound and treason start with Catherine´s silliness and frivolity since she neglects a heartrending passion to avoid a social degradation. This and a twist of fate make facts irreversible: The union of Catherine and Heathcliff is no more possible and the lad quits Wuthering Heights as a disillusioned boy only to return from an internal hell as a vindictive man. His overwhelming presence gains with adulthood supported in a wealthy impression, exquisite correctness and cold education. But this external improvement only conceals spiritual depravation.
Heathcliff´s relationship with Catherine after her marriage is bitter and full of reproaches. She becomes ruined by present dullness and her own guilty. He condemns her to perpetual sorrow and directly provokes her mental deterioration through his harsh sincerity. But even after her death does Heathcliff pursue the wretch of both Lintons and Earnshaws. On page 188, chapter XXI (Penguin Books) the man makes a declaration of facts and intentions so brutal and savage that the reader can’t less than be scandalized. If the evil of Heathcliff is reduced to excessive rancour and contemptuous pride at the beginning, he will develop new and disgusting devices to spread out his bitterness such as marrying a woman whom he doesn’t love –Isabella-, corrupting Hareton, threatening Linton, kidnapping Ellen Dean, forcing Miss Cathy to an unwanted marriage, beating Hindley or bribing the lawyer.
Special cruelty is shown in Linton’s approach. Heathcliff hates his son because of his physical weakness and for being the offspring of Isabella. And Linton, educated in manipulation and rejection, inherits his father’s vileness.
Heathcliff´s growing villainy reaches his peak quite at the end of the novel, when he scorns Linton, Edgar and Cathy, or when out of any sacred respect desecrates the dead –like in Poe’s tales- just to glimpse Catherine again twenty years later.
The most dramatic change in his behaviour takes place just after, when, owner of the Heights and the Grange but weary of living with Hareton and Cathy, he remains absent and waits for something to happen. Only then the reader realizes all the frustrated love for Catherine and the torture he has been suffering during her absence. The villain then humanizes substituting evil for apparent madness: He starts watching Catherine’s ghost -a Shakespearean recurrent topic in Macbeth or Hamlet- and expecting his time to come. Death in Heathcliff´s heart is a real liberation from perpetual agony, hatred, pain, evil and remorse.
The second most important character of the book –letting aside Nelly’s omnipresence- dies in the middle of the plot. Catherine Linton leaves an air of unfulfilment and one feels that she is a better person than she appears. But most of her qualities -except her love for Heathcliff- remain in her daughter. Her reincarnation provides her a new opportunity to fight for happiness. When alive, Catherine Earnshaw spoils her youth in search of superficiality. She finds it fully straight. Notwithstanding, other high values conquers Heathcliff, like savage passion, a free spirit, joyous personality or social class unconsciousness. The latter is not going to last for long as long as her convalescence at Thrushcross Grange separates clearly their two social worlds: her own (upper class) and that of Heathcliff (lower class). Their love failure is the triumph of social conventions against that new spirit of equality. But this schism is not really the victory of class feelings, but the surrender of her wild spirit to a new life of comfort and boring vacuity.
After marrying Edgar Linton, Catherine shows known and new defects beyond patience: She exhibits mischief, insolence, victim mentality, egotism, manipulation and evil. She gets to the point of overacting her own death parody. Her whimful character and the contempt she feels for Edgar and the remorse for Heathcliff lead her to a genuine serious illness. Catherine Linton dies giving birth to Miss Cathy Linton, who represents herself in a resume, a second opportunity.
Hindley Earnshaw represents malice and cowardliness. He humiliates Heathcliff because he fears the orphan child. He is afraid of losing his father’s affection, his convenient position, his social status and money. And Hindley knows Heathcliff is much better, stronger and more righteous. His biased treatment will cause Heathcliff to escape, survive and come back to take fair revenge. The fact is that his revenge turns to be too excessive, too unfair.
Just as Hindley stands for the upper class evil, Edgar becomes the upper class kindness. He bears Catherine like a saint, brings up Miss Cathy properly and try to keep his nephew Linton with him. His sister Isabella possesses similar characteristics although her degree of emptiness is higher. She falls in disgrace when mistakenly marries Heathcliff.
Hareton is the only character in frequent contact with Heathcliff that doesn’t get corrupted. He survives in a rude insignificance far from the wretch of his father or the maliciousness of Mr. Heathcliff. His future prosperity is miraculous and unimaginable. He’s totally opposite to his father: Strong, pure, uneducated, healthy and good. He resembles an untreasoned Heathcliff and their relationship is relatively cordial.
Unlike his noble cousin, Linton suffers physically the scars of their parents rejection and grief. And his unhealthy body will soon put on service to a manipulating mind. Linton is a prolongation of his father’s contempt. He stands for the personification of late Heathcliff, Hindley Earnshaw and Isabella Linton: evil behaviour, corrupted soul and fragile constitution. His indicative disgrace is an inevitable punishment to his fear and weakness.
Miss Cathy is the aforementioned last chance for Catherine to gain pardon and achieve true love. She isn´t able to rescue Linton from his father’s diabolical influence, but manages to cast her wild passion for life towards much worthy people like her father or Hareton. However, her first years are full of comfort and wealth, which develop in Cathy a taste for disobedience and lack of satisfaction. Her redemption is possible only when she is deprived of her easy life and relaxing circumstances. The catharsis she suffers includes other major sacrifices like her forced wedding, Edgar’s death or her inheritance loss in favour of Heathcliff. And through pain and humiliation Miss Cathy learns to value underclass people and little things. These two redeeming factors are the key to Hareton and to happiness. And Hareton answers like a pure Heathcliff without vindictive longings. All the while, Catherine and her beloved Heathcliff find their long awaited love after death.
More than one hundred fifty years after its publication, Wuthering Heights remains as one of the most significant examples of sick love and fatality through the constrictions of social inscrutability. Some critics have seen in it an eternal fight between the forces of nature and man, between good and evil, between body and soul. In any case, Wuthering Heights stays as a novel of great beauty and devastating intensity.

Chronos

2008-12-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

Chronos

So you're still there, looking at me, with your pop ,toad-like eyes and that severe expression of infinite wisdom. Just trying to make me lose faith, to make me embrace yours as unique salvation. I'm not yours. I don't believe in you. I just believe in me and my tears, my fears, my anger. I'm little, but genuine. I cry every tiny step I walk, I dream nightmares that never let me alone, but, still, I am here, insignificant, faulty, scared, but rid of your falseness. You're a god I don't want to admire, a lake I don't want to swim in, a sun I don't want to enjoy. You taught me everything: good, evil, nature, skill, poetry, arts and crafts, history, religion, love, business. You told me everything that had to be done, what to press, when to act and how to try, where to go and who to love, which to choose and why to insist. All that swagger was a complete lie. All your doctrine was false, your attempts, faked, and your defeats, excused. You never sat in front of me and told me: "I have flaws, I'm less that I pretend, I haven't tried as hard as you do, I'm proud of what you are, you are definitely what you try instead of what you are able to, and your will has no limits." You harmed me forever, you failed me, you lied me, you stole my self-confidence. Now I'm forever wounded, I'll never heal completely. But you are not my lighthouse now, I don't need you. I have learned how to trip and go on. I still love you, but don't need you. You have taught me something really important. Something that I will never forget. Whatever I will be, I don't want to be like you. I want to fail and say "I have failed", to boast and say "I have boasted without reason", to commit a mistake and say "I was mistaken". Just not to justify myself putting the blame on elements or factual powers. Just to admit that, after all that potential you told me I had, I was just a single boy with limited powers and a special taste for flops. I killed you too late, you never let me run free. You deceived, squeezed and tied me. How could I have the lesser opportunity to succeed?

Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus

2008-12-24T09:33:00.000-08:00

Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus

All the great themes and values of romanticism are present in this moving, astonishing novel, the masterpiece of Mary Shelley, who wrote it by chance in response to a peculiar bet with her husband Percy Bysshee Shelley and Lord Byron. It was only to be a ghost story to liven the nights up there in Switzerland, but Percy encouraged Mary to develop so interesting a plot.
Technically the novel lacks omniscient narrator and displays little dialogue, linking the structure by means of addressed letters and first-hand narrations where extensive monologues mingle with brief, intense verbal interaction. Thus, the book starts right at the end of the facts with an almost-dying Victor Frankenstein saved from the glacial freezing by a vessel in search of discovery and conquest. Then the events reaching this point are described in several letters by the captain to a beloved sister, reproducing Frankenstein’s narration, which is divided into chapters. Some chapters in turn quote monster’s words or other people’s narrative, so that the same actions are sometimes told from different angles depending on the narrator. All this puzzle of narration within narration weaves a coherent web where the story reveals its main aspects and highlights.
The atmosphere of strength, despair, horror and beauty owes much of its veracity to the spirit of romanticism that impregnates every gust of air throughout the novel. Shelley was strongly influenced by the Romantic Movement. Not in vain Samuel Coleridge’s Rime of the ancient mariner is referred to twice. The name of William Wordsworth is also mentioned once, which proved how interested the author was in the spirit of the age.
The story in itself is an inverted journey from desperation to initial happiness led to final misfortune. It has also to do with nature, ambition, solitude, suffering, frustration, family, vengeance, violence and guilt. Victor Frankenstein is a young student educated in a wealthy and happy family, with an ambitious desire for knowledge sharpened by the premature death of his blissful mother. From this moment, victory upon death is the only obsession of Frankenstein and, prompted by an excessive eagerness for wisdom, exceeds every legal and moral limit. Feeling predestined to overpass the natural flow of death, Victor embarks himself in the search of restoration of life, defying natural laws and the designs of God. From the very moment he succeeds things start going wrong, and they gradually only change to worse.
The doom of Frankenstein is based on two unique but decisive mistaken actions. The first wrong decision, and the origin of all wretchedness is the creation of the monster and his subsequent “birth”. The second mistake doesn’t happen far in time since occurs just after the awakening of the giant. And the point is that, right after seeing his task accomplished, Victor feels a profound repulsion towards his creature and escapes from him, leaving a potential superhuman alone, with no moral values, no family, no world knowledge, no past and no future at all, just disconcerting present. The scientist fails because his fears and displeasures beat him, and he doesn’t act in line with his principles. He does something wrong first, and doesn’t come to terms with it later.
From this chapter on the narration is full of guilt and some demonstrations of nature broken in its most violent expression, which symbolizes the wrath of God at the daring of man. A parallelism may be established between God, who creates Nature, and Frankenstein, who creates evil. The creation of man acts badly, and so does nature in response during the break of the storm.
The account of the monster constitutes a genuine treaty of acquisition of a language by means of direct observation and no interaction at all. From this learning it also appears education of values, feelings and behaviour, again from the distance, only in theory. This (and his detestable physical look, of course) is the cause of his social failure. The acquisition of knowledge is an unhappy one since the monster discovers the beautiful aspects of life just by omission, longing them in his peeping of the happy neighbour family who share companion, conversation, food and affection. Once the wretch is aware of his situation another romantic theme arouses within his soul: frustration. An utter feeling of incapability to fulfil any pleasant wish apart from primary necessities such as food, rest, shelter. Therefore the creature turns to be the naive lament of a generation of discontent and disappointed intellectuals against progress, cold rationalism and mechanization, in constant search of beauty, passion, fulfilment and other lost higher feelings. It’s not strange that the monster is vegetarian and lives in a rather naturist way.
During his stay at the hovel, his feelings are noble and he behaves with kindness and good will. He provides wood for the family and receives unnoticed instruction in turn. But another dramatic decision, this time on the giant account, spoils everything again. The monster, now capable of deep rationalism and high emotions and full of kindness and good actions, tries to interact with the family, hoping that interior beauty will surpass external appearance. How mistaken! The reaction of the De Lacey family constitutes again a fierce criticism against the superfluous moral of the time and the bitter victory of social conventions upon deeper thinking and feeling.
From this time on the destiny of creator and monster begins to be alike. Deprived of his apparent family, who deject him, the wretch tries to deprive Victor of his own. His frustration leads to hatred, especially over that who created him and then escaped from his abhorrent creation.
The pilgrimage of the giant from Germany to Geneve is full of contradictory feelings. Frustration and compensation are mixed with hatred and vengeance, but all the sensations of the monster are covered with a mantle of despair. He commits another irreversible act - killing William – and makes things worse, although his dark side enjoys producing pain. The monster now takes refuge into the wild and snowy mountains of Switzerland, establishing a peculiar relation with them, especially with the coldness. And physically the monster, so many times described as strong but clumsy through biased horror films, is full of agility and superhuman capabilities. Wild nature constitutes the reign of the gigantic figure sharing all its features: solitude, wilderness, inhospitality, calm but with strokes of unbound violence. The great contrast appears with regard to beauty. Creation of man spoils creation of God when the monster breaks the beauty of the scenery by walking on it. He later on will perverted himself with the unfair use of manlike tools, like fire, the sledge or specially the gun and pistols with which he threatens poor country people.
When the wretched thing finds Victor both share grief and curse. The giant asks the doctor a half-satisfactory wish, to have a female companion who won’t deject him. Up to this point the creature shows resignation as he understands man will never accept him. But the request turns in menace just in case this will not fulfilled. And no matter what Victor makes, he will be forever doomed with a sense of inextinguishable guilt. Both man and creature start to infect each other with his personal sorrow: Victor suffers solitude and the giant undergoes the same culpability.
Three more relevant encounters are produced between creator and creation. The second happens when Frankenstein destroys the limbs of the potential female monster. Although the decision is correct it is too late and the monster curses him and his family. He doesn’t waste time and slaughters Clerval hastily. In the next meeting the wretch accomplishes his revenge murdering Elizabeth on their wedding-night. The last encounter is marked by the sorrow of the monster and the eternal rest of the daring creator.
The parallelism between the two main characters is complete at the end, when both look for the death of his antagonist, although Victor still searches to prevent mankind from that devil. He will fail, but the monster will die in proper time by his own determination without spreading more havoc. The roles of creator and creature are sometimes inverted. Frankenstein gave life to the monster but during the novel it is the wretch who controls life and death like an impassive God. He is omnipresent and appears always in the right moment. He has a supernatural supremacy of time and space. And the doctor becomes the punished son who has committed an abhorrent error. The giant represents both the imperfection and evil of man and the anger of a defied Lord.
Mary Shelley titled her work as Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus because she resumed the myth of the titan that created man and challenged Zeus by stealing the Fire of the Gods as a present for mankind. He was punished and chained to a Caucasus mountain where an eagle ate his liver everyday inflicting him an unbearable agony. Fire represented supreme intelligence and wisdom, that is why Doctor Victor Frankenstein shares with the titan the absolute knowledge to give life. In the Greek tradition Prometheus was liberated by Heracles and in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein it is the wretched giant who frees Victor not from chains, but from painful life.
The myth of Prometheus is also renewed in Prometheus unbound, by Percy Bysshee Shelley, husband of Mary, who obviously highly influenced the creation of this novel of predestination, ambition, wilderness, solitude, guilt, nature and beautiful horror.