Just Go With The Flow

The act of writing itself and what it conveys is absolutely critical when giving voice to an idea or to a cause.  All of the writers we spoke about this semester have a common central argument that concerns reaching enlightenment -whether it be done through satire, poetry, mockery, and narrative.  By the time we got to Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, we see the evolution of writing techniques and rhetoric.  Thus, our experience as students in this class, from beginning to end of the semester, can too symbolize the act of enlightenment, even if you do not want to believe it or not.

Many of us, initially, came in knowing somewhat what enlightenment meant, but I do not believe we actually have ever immersed ourselves so deeply into reflecting this work unto ourselves.  Again, Mary Shelley’s form of writing seems to be one of the most interesting forms as the narrative, the voice(s), bring us as a reader back and forth, to and from, and up and down through out her written work because it takes us a while to distinguish who is who and for what purpose are these voices being used. The way she began the book, using Victor Frankensein’s voice, reminds me of one of the assignments we were given in class where we had to choose a writing mechanism to mock a potential conversation taking place between Olaudah Equiano and Thomas Jefferson, where the goal was so that Equiano could suggest to Jefferson what specific details he should add to the Declaration of Independence.  Similarly, Mary Shelley wrote pretend conversations taking place through journals and letters.  I can see now, based on my experience in having to pretend that Equiano’s message actually did reach Thomas Jefferson, how important such a publication like Shelley’s was.

Through Victor’s voice, in the first few chapters, when saying, “I have described myself as always having been embued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature” we can see how Shelley carefully began placing clues, foreshadows, if you will, of the monster (pun intended) Victor Frankenstein will come to create just off of a simple curiosity. Through this book, we as a reader and potential future writers can learn so much.  We can learn about writing as an aesthetic, but we can also learn about it on an implicit level.

The experience of reading all of the texts throughout the semester, and picking up rhetoric ideals can, as a whole, represents our own enlightenment -whether we want it or not. I personally am more aware of so much when it comes to myself and the society that surrounds me.  I have learned that not much has changed when it comes to a clear and cut division between who sees themselves as the elite, and who are the Others.  And whether it was an elitist we read from or a writer giving voice to an group that is marginalized, writing is what illuminates the darkness that we can often find ourselves in when we just go with the flow with the status quo. (purposefully rhymed).

-Marcy Martinez

“I know your’e a slave and all and, at that, I was even a slave for a moment, but ahh I have had a terrible few days. Here, let me set my tired foot upon your head.”

“Me, me, me” is the title of the world Crusoe lives in.  Despite having all available means to help him not only survive in life, but essentially thrive luxuriously in life, Crusoe still breaks into a tantrum, claiming that he needs to get away as it was divinely assigned for him to do so: “I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea, and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will…”(1).

Crusoe, like the picture, wants to be seen as an unselfish man who only seeks to find meaning in the world, but ironically seems to only appear as the self-serving well-to-do of a man who he grew up as.  Totally undermining the life of slaves, and despite he himself experienced being one, still finds a way to make his predicament  seem perfectly designed by God, “I was perfectly overwhelmed, and now I look’d back upon my father’s prophetik discourse to me, that i should be miserable….that now the hand of Heaven had over taken me”(13).  As one can see, though he understands the misery of being enslaved, we later come to learn that he not only gets a slave or two himself, but sells them as if they were merely property.  Property, like the head he has bestowed his foot upon, in the picture.

Like I stated above, Crusoe talks a lot about himself, but he also talks about God repeatedly throughout the text; always eluding to the notion that God is causing all the bad that is happening to him.  In my mind, all I see is a man who is playing make believe, and using his power as an Englishman to utilize natives, of the lands he has visited, as props for his make believe world.

Once he is settled on the island, he becomes lost on, he describes his surroundings, “Then to see how like a king I din’d too, all alone, attended by my servants”(108).  This shows two things we see in the picture below: that he has a ridiculous sense of grandeur, and that he does not consider non-English people -such as the natives- as people.  The world he lives in is the worst scenario of make believe I have ever seen.

-Maricela Martinez (Marcy)