The monster follows a trajectory similar to Frye’s myth cycle. He is created by Victor and goes through a birth or growth while observing the cottagers; he seeks out Victor in the hope of the construction of a bride; in the death phase he chases after Victor on the frozen wasteland; finally, the monster defeats Victor and dies in the darkness of the ice. Does this make the monster and not Victor the hero?
In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud warns against reading “characters according to their pictorial value instead of according to symbolic relation” (819). Saussure states that “the linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image” (852). Are Freud’s symbolic dream-thoughts similar to the sound-image relationship presented by Saussure?
As the monster begins to learn language, he discovers that the words the cottagers use had no “apparent connexion with visible objects” (74). Is the monster stumbling on the same concepts of Freud and Saussure?
A weekly conversation between 12 graduate students using Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and its model of monstrous hybridity to explore the equally monstrous, equally hybrid field of literary theory. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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