Exploring the God-Adam paradigm in Mary Sh e ll e y’s Frankenstein

1. Exploring the God-Adam paradigm in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Mr. Cleon M. McLean Department of English Ontario High School

2. Philosophical Statement on Ontology=nature of being In our quest for truth and meaning, finding ourselves (or who we really are) is the ultimate aim

3. God-Adam ParadigmMichelangelo’s The Creation of Adam

4. God-Adam ParadigmThe doppelganger Archetype • Literally, when translated from German, “doppelganger” means double-walker • This relationship between the Self and the Doubleis intensified when we consider… • animation—the appearanceof life in an inanimate object • automation—questions the nature of “selfhood”” • disorientation—“uncanny” convergence of life and lifelessness; the embodied Self (i.e., original) v. the representation of Self (i.e., copy)

5. Psychology of Strangeness:…from the perspective of Sigmund Freud’s “Das Unheimliche” (i.e., “Unhomely) essay • The uncanny is the return of something long repressed, which was once familiar… “remnants of animistic mental activity” (Freud 1919). • Referencing the doppelganger, Freud says that “the self may thus be duplicated, divided, and interchanged” (1919). • Think about an avatar.

6. Transgressing the boundary between natural and supernatural • This transgression begs the question, to what extent does the representation, i.e., the creature, “represent” the original? Allusion: God created Adam in His own image. Victor’s creature, however, thinks that it is more akin to Satan than to God…to what extent is this a reflection on Victor, the creator?

7. Crossing the Threshold • Is there a point at which the Representationstops being a symbol and starts functioning(modus operandi) as the thing it once symbolized? In other words, when does the Specterreality become the Material/Corpus/Carbon reality? • (in this abstract construct, what is the role of imagination? What value is “lived experience”? observed reality v. participant reality)

8. Distortion and the Grotesque • Are outward manifestations of evil/wickedness or corruption a necessary prerequisite for monstrosity? • The American writer Flannery O’Connor wrote in her lecture, “Novelist and Believer”, • Distortion…is an instrument; exaggeration has a purpose, and the whole structure of the story or novel has been made what it is because of belief. This is not the kind of distortion that destroys; it is the kind that reveals, or should reveal.

9. Grendel, a classic “monster”

10. Boston Bombing Suspect, DzhokarTsarnaev (19 years-old)…a modern “monster”?

11. 2008 Vogue magazine cover with LeBron Whatis meant to be scary? Who is meant to be scared? 1933 “King Kong” movie poster

13. The Body Politic • Clearly we need to revisit and redefine or deconstruct the modes, media, and discourse patterns we have historically used to define what a “monster”, especially since such frameworks have been used (in a political context) to marginalize some people as “The Other” who embody features, values, habits, and languages which are markedly different from those of the dominant group.