Frankenstein - Abortion

"I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice." p. 210

I'll be tackling what appears to be a motif of Frankenstein: unwanted life. Ever since Victor first created Mario (Mario of course being the creature), there has been this idea of a life existing that nobody really wanted to exist. Mario was, in fact, alive, but Frankenstein immediately regretted it, and actually set out to destroy the life that he created. There's just this sense that now that some living thing has become an inconvenience, it is acceptable to extinguish that little spark of life. This sounds eerily similar to a process that exists today, and Shelley finally mentions it by name on the second-to-last page: Abortion. BOOM. This blog post just got real.

So how about that? Could this novel actually be a commentary on the abortion of adorable unborn babies? Up until five minutes ago, I had no idea if they even practiced abortions way back in The Olden Times, but apparently abortion has been practiced since The Very Olden Times, and maybe even Way Before Those Times! So I like to think that it's actually extremely possible that Shelley is commenting on abortion. But more importantly, what exactly is she saying? Shelley is a noted feminist, so does she portray abortion as a good right that protects a woman's ability to do whatever she may want with her own body? Well...no. You see, throughout the novel, as Victor's desire to terminate the life he created increases, his resemblance to what we actually consider a monster increases as well. He gradually becomes more brutal and less human, more bloodthirsty and less compassionate. He stops caring about human relationships, the beauty of nature, and even science, his one true love (♥). As he abandons these human qualities and becomes more animalistic, it simply reveals that Shelley is conveying her belief that abortion is in fact a monstrous practice.

Four - Lady Brett Ashley

Apparently, Brett and Jake are madly in love. Except that Jake can't have sex, and Brett doesn't love him enough to give up on having sex forever. Love is a strange and terrifying concept. Anyway, Brett's fixation on sexual relations seems to be her own special way of coping with her life's lack of direction. She likes to run around and have lots of meaningless intercourse, and it makes her feel like her life has meaning, but in reality, she recognizes that this behavior isn't fulfilling at all, and in reality, she's "been so miserable" (p. 32). So this looks like another case of people trying to physically "move" away from their problems. First we had Cohn who wanted to move to South America, and then there was Jake who constantly hops from bar to bar, and now there's Brett who jumps from significant male other to the next. This sense of "movement" seems to be a recurring idea throughout the novel. That's a motif, yeah?...yeah. Furthermore, it appears that Brett's very presence seems to frustrate Jake, as is seen on page 38: "To hell with Brett. To hell with you, Lady Ashley." She seems to serve as a constant reminder to Jake that he just can't do the nasty like he once could.

Perhaps it's just the vicodin talking, but I really could not come up with a relevant picture.
Edit: I'm not actually a vicodin addict; I got my wisdom teeth pulled two days ago.

Nineteen - Night Life

This lovely chapter details the mental adventure of a fellow who gradually goes insane. goody. In this situation, I don't really think the manner of his insanity matters too much. What O'Brien is trying to point out here is who finally ended up cracking. It was Rat Kiley, the medic, and the fellow who we haven't heard too much about so far. The one thing that seems to be missing from Kiley is his own personal method of coping. So far, there's been a bit of a recurring theme with several of the characters of how each one takes a different method to make the horrors of war seem more bearable. Perhaps it's a motif. I don't know, I've never understood that silly word. What the heck, let's label it anyway. There has been Azar and his tasteless jokes, Lemon and his tough-guy act, Sanders and his morals, O'Brien and his writing, Lavender and his drugs, Kiowa and his religion, et cetera. However, Kiley has no such ward to protect himself, and thus during the night, he is the only one who "couldn't make the adjustment" (p. 208). He was the only one who had absolutely nothing to hold himself up with, nothing to fall back on. And eventually, in the dark, there was nothing to keep the terrible things he had seen, especially as a field medic, from coming back and driving him insane. So I guess what O'Brien is saying is just that everybody really just needs something to help them cope with hardships in life, and if you don't...well, you can always just put a bullet in your foot.

This is a foot.