This blog was created for the English 590.04H class (Honors Seminar in Romantic Literature: Gothicism and Dark Romanticism) at The Ohio State University, spring quarter 2012
I really enjoy this comic! Since we all have different ideas about what is evil, who is evil, and how something or someone comes to be evil based off our own personal experiences, looking at what someone else deems as horrifying or monster-like greatly interests me.
After looking at this comic, I began to reflect upon what and/or who I consider to be evil. If we each had to create a comic featuring images of what we each individually considered to be evil, horrifying, tragic, etc., we would all produce very different pieces of work.
Therefore, what the novel Frankenstein does is question people's ideas about evilness, thus forcing them to not necessarily determine who is more evil in the novel, but rather what they believe constitutes evilness within the context of their own lives.
This is an awesome comic and I think it raises a lot of pretty powerful questions. We tend to view history in a vacuum, or as a series of only marginally related events. In doing so, we enable ourselves to create this "enemy image" of those who disagree with us, or those who we fear. The last panel of your first page shows a nuclear bomb exploding. The public discourse on nukes or other WMDs is almost comical in its hypocrisy- we are constantly fretting about the possibility of countries like Iran or North Korea having nuclear capabilities, yet we sit on the largest stockpile of deadly weapons in the world. Yes, based on the current regimes of those countries, it is easy to imagine them as unstable actors, but the contradiction exists nonetheless. The same things stands out in the panel with the swastika and the World Trade Center. There is no doubt that Hitler is in the running for the most atrocious human being of all time. But without the U.S. and its Allies completely devastating Germany through reparations after WWI, the kind of power vacuum necessary to create a leader like Hitler would never have existed. The CIA trained Osama bin Laden and the mujahideen in the 1980's when it suited them as a safeguard against the Soviets, and America wonders why such a tragedy like 9/11 could occur. It is easy for Frankenstein to curse his creation and for us to see it as a monstrous thing, but it really speaks to the human propensity for abandoning context and vilifying those things that we know in our heart of hearts stem principally from our own misdeeds.
This is a great look at one of the major themes of Frankenstein. It seems to imply that we have evolved from animals to monsters, destroying our world and each other as we go. I love that at the end, Frankenstein seems tame; in this strip, we don't even see any of the murders that he was responsible for the book because they seem to be fairly insignificant from all of the things that we as humans have done. Perspective and the events that are chosen to be portrayed are what make meaning. Something is always missing, but both what is missing and what is shown are deliberate choices to create a specific view of characters and events.
I really enjoy this comic! Since we all have different ideas about what is evil, who is evil, and how something or someone comes to be evil based off our own personal experiences, looking at what someone else deems as horrifying or monster-like greatly interests me.
ReplyDeleteAfter looking at this comic, I began to reflect upon what and/or who I consider to be evil. If we each had to create a comic featuring images of what we each individually considered to be evil, horrifying, tragic, etc., we would all produce very different pieces of work.
Therefore, what the novel Frankenstein does is question people's ideas about evilness, thus forcing them to not necessarily determine who is more evil in the novel, but rather what they believe constitutes evilness within the context of their own lives.
This is an awesome comic and I think it raises a lot of pretty powerful questions. We tend to view history in a vacuum, or as a series of only marginally related events. In doing so, we enable ourselves to create this "enemy image" of those who disagree with us, or those who we fear. The last panel of your first page shows a nuclear bomb exploding. The public discourse on nukes or other WMDs is almost comical in its hypocrisy- we are constantly fretting about the possibility of countries like Iran or North Korea having nuclear capabilities, yet we sit on the largest stockpile of deadly weapons in the world. Yes, based on the current regimes of those countries, it is easy to imagine them as unstable actors, but the contradiction exists nonetheless. The same things stands out in the panel with the swastika and the World Trade Center. There is no doubt that Hitler is in the running for the most atrocious human being of all time. But without the U.S. and its Allies completely devastating Germany through reparations after WWI, the kind of power vacuum necessary to create a leader like Hitler would never have existed. The CIA trained Osama bin Laden and the mujahideen in the 1980's when it suited them as a safeguard against the Soviets, and America wonders why such a tragedy like 9/11 could occur. It is easy for Frankenstein to curse his creation and for us to see it as a monstrous thing, but it really speaks to the human propensity for abandoning context and vilifying those things that we know in our heart of hearts stem principally from our own misdeeds.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great look at one of the major themes of Frankenstein. It seems to imply that we have evolved from animals to monsters, destroying our world and each other as we go. I love that at the end, Frankenstein seems tame; in this strip, we don't even see any of the murders that he was responsible for the book because they seem to be fairly insignificant from all of the things that we as humans have done. Perspective and the events that are chosen to be portrayed are what make meaning. Something is always missing, but both what is missing and what is shown are deliberate choices to create a specific view of characters and events.
ReplyDelete