Tag: extracredit

Extra credit: Bad magic is turning the emperor into a llama instead of killing him

On October 30th, my school participated in Frankenreads. It’s a huge event completely revolved around the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein. I had the opportunity to hear from one of our deans, who talked about the history of the romantic era and Mary Shelley. I then attended a lecture on alchemy and its relation to science as we know it today. This was a talk by two professors who I have had the ability to be taught by in earlier courses (one currently as well), so it was really fun to see them shift gears and give a fun talk. As an English minor, very rarely would I ever get to experience my science teachers engaging in what would seem to be an English department event so this was truly a highlight of the day for me. I learned so much about alchemy. It’s more complex than I gave it credit for and I see a lot of aspects of alchemy in today. My favorite quote from the talk, which I am completely paraphrasing, was “Good magic became science and evil/bad magic became what we know as magic today”. What they meant was things like medicines, herbal remedies, and chemicals were considered good so we should continue that and would be known as science, while potions that turned people into llamas were bad and that stayed as magic. Magic was able to be considered bad really quickly if we only associate the bad with it. In addition to learning about how science and magic became different, the lecture went into how alchemy had a lot of ethics behind it and that really effected how research at that time was conducted. People were less likely to do things if they thought they were unethical, which was great for alchemy. This also posed an argument that Victor’s switch from alchemy to science is what made him lose some of the ethical reasoning for creating the creature. It was a really great argument to think about.

After the lecture, I attended the art performance where there was a dramatic reading of chapter 7 and my creative writing class read our retellings of Frankenstein. My retelling was a letter from Henry Clerval to Victor after the death of his brother. I wanted to write something about being thoughtful and empathetic, as an underlying theme in this story is empathy. Shelley is able to make us question how empathy works and makes us question why we have empathy for “like” but have hatred and distrust for “unlike”. I had struggled initially with writing this piece but I love how it turned out. It had a similar tone to what I thought Shelley would have used for Clerval, if he had written a letter himself. Overall, I am happy I made the decision to attend all of the events and learn about different aspects to Frankenstein. Cultural events like these help to bring people together that wouldn’t typically have something in common. The English department and the science department at my school rarely have the opportunity to have events together because the curriculum seems so distant. By attending the Frankenreads event, students who would never share a classroom were able to find something to bond over.

 

Image from: The Emperor’s New Groove

Post originally from: https://masnead.wordpress.com/2018/11/01/bad-magic-is-turning-the-emperor-into-a-llama-instead-of-killing-him/

Extra Credit (Frankenreads)

I went to the Alchemy in Frankenstein event for Frankenreads. I thought that it was very interesting to learn the alchemy wasn’t necessarily this wrong thing, but it is seen more as a field of study that was later separated out into a lot of smaller subjects like astrology, chemistry, mathematics, etc. It was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be and the professors made the lesson very enjoyable. It gave a whole new perspective into the way of alchemy and also how it could be applied into the modern world today. This perspective was also interesting because Frankenstein kind of implied that alchemy had no use in the modern world where there could actually be some cases where it would make sense  I think it was definitely worth going to the event.

Extra Credit (Frankenreads)

I attended the Frankenreads event that was in class on Tuesday October 30th but also was able to experience the event at 5:30 in upstairs Rockland.

The in-class event was about the book history of Frankenstein. I was able to learn more about how Mary Shelly inserted parts of herself into her work. I also learned more about how creation narratives work and the summer of 1816. The summer of 1816 was when there was a major volcanic eruption that caused the summer to be very cold and bleak. This was when Frankenstein was written.

 

At the event in upstairs Rockland students did their own interpretation of Frankenstein, made their own stories inspired by Frankenstein, and their own alternate universe writings inspired by Frankenstein. Two of the stories that I truly enjoyed was a letter written from Henry to Victor and a writing that focused on how Victor was a monster all along and how we as humans are the real monsters.

The first writing was a letter of how Victors friend that visited while he was in college had found victors notebook. His visit happened to be when Victor got conveniently sick after releasing the creature to its own devices. I feel like the beginning of it had slight queer undertones, in the way that Henry talked about Victor and the care he was providing him. And then later made the comparison of how a mother leaves her child. I liked the idea of the friend looking after the creature in a foster parent kind of way because Victor did not. I feel like the student did a really good job making the reading sound similar to how Frankenstein reads.

The second writing was good as well. It focused on how everyone thinks they are a good person when in reality they often are not. I liked her analogy of how hate cooks you from the inside out, much like a kiln cooks pottery until its dry. I thought this provided a lot of good symbolism and sounded really good. Another thing I noticed in this reading was how she talked about loosing a child in some aspect. This made me think that maybe she was alluding to Victors “loss” of the creature. it also made me think the student was maybe alluding deeper still to how Mary Shelly herself continuously lost children in her lifetime.