Day: January 24, 2015

Dear Ms Samantha Taylor,

I have recently read your article in the Edutronic newspaper named ‘Clive Thompson says the digital age is making teenagers uniquely shallow’, and I support and agree with your idea to an extent. I am writing this letter because I feel that I also should express my view points, and as a 16 year old teenager can correlate more to the reality of if this is true to me and my fellow peers. I feel that it is essential and necessary that I oppose such wicked claims against us teenagers.

In this essay, I will be analysing the language and structure presented within Frankenstein and The Tempest, and I will compare the ways in which monstrosity is presented in both books. Monstrosity is explored in various ways in different contexts on both books and many quotes are given to support these ideas. The definition of monstrosity is a thing which is outrageously evil or wrong.

The definition of social context is ‘the immediate physical and social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops.’ It also includes ‘the culture that the individual was educated or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom they interact.’ In Frankenstein, the social context of this book involves the ‘aldini experiment’ which was a real experiment which took place in January 1803 in London. This event consisted the dead body of the murderer George Forster being taken to the Royal College of Surgeons, and being attempted to return the corpse to life. In the end, ‘as Aldini probed Forster’s rectrum, causing his clenched fist to punch the air, as if in fury, his legs to kick and his back to arch violently. It is clear that Mary Shelley grabbed a direct influence from this experiment in order to come up which the idea of writing this book. The Tempest on the other hand, examples of the book and play’s social context are in ‘The King’s Men” play where it was performed both at the outdoor Globe Theatre and the indoor Blackfriars Theatre and their plays would have had to work in either venue. Therefore, much dramatic effect was left up to the minds of the audience. A similar situation is given in The Tempest play when in Act II, scene i Gonzalo, Sebastian, and Antonio argue about whether the island is beautiful or barren. The bareness of the stage would have allowed either option to be possible in the audience’s mind at any given moment.

The first piece I am going to analyse is a extract from Frankenstein, chapter 5. When looking at the monster’s physical appearance, Victor Frankenstein describes his first encounter with the monster. In this he says “I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open. His yellow skin. A more horrid contrast with his watery eyes.” When looking at this piece we can see that