Thursday, April 14, 2011

Frankenstein - Convenient License

"This was indeed a godlike science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it." p. 106-107

I for one find it very impressive that The Creature should be able to learn how to speak human language purely by observation (although I suppose that's how all of us learn it, really), however it still seems rather unbelievable that he should learn to speak it so well and in so little time, too. The conversation that he carries on with Victor is not, in fact, a simple conversation containing language akin to a five-year-old, but rather a fairly complex conversation utilizing high-level diction. In fact, it's a little too impressive. Frankly, I just don't believe it. I could understand it if he had learned the language while immersed in an urban environment in which people might help him along. However, to achieve such a mastery of language simply by observing poor cottagers living all the way out in the boonies of Switzerland sounds a tad preposterous, so I'll go ahead and label this as Convenient License, wherein it is more convenient for The Creature to understand how to speak with other people, and thus Mary Shelley makes it so. It honestly reminds me a bit of the Star Trek series in that every alien race speaks English and resembles a human being while every planet has similar gravity and atmosphere composition as Earth. It's just more convenient, although logically preposterous. So if there's not a word for that concept yet, I hereby declare it to be Convenient License.

3 comments:

  1. I guess you'll have to follow-up on this post when you find out how he learned language, to see if you find it more believable

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  2. Frankly. Ahaha.

    I see whatcha did there.

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  3. Agreed Bryan, and I fed your fish

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