Exploring the God-Adam paradigm in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Mr. Cleon M. McLeanDepartment of EnglishOntario High School

Philosophical Statement on Ontology=nature of being

In our quest for truth and meaning, finding ourselves

(or who we really are) is the ultimate aim

God-Adam ParadigmMichelangelo’s The Creation of Adam

God-Adam ParadigmThe doppelganger Archetype

•Literally, when translated from German, “doppelganger” means double-walker

• This relationship between the Self and the Double is intensified when we consider…▫animation—the appearance of life in an

inanimate object▫automation—questions the nature of

“selfhood””▫disorientation—“uncanny” convergence of life

and lifelessness; the embodied Self (i.e., original) v. the representation of Self (i.e., copy)

Psychology of Strangeness:…from the perspective of Sigmund Freud’s “Das

Unheimliche” (i.e., “Unhomely) essay •The uncanny is the return of something

long repressed, which was once familiar… “remnants of animistic mental activity” (Freud 1919).

•Referencing the doppelganger, Freud says that “the self may thus be duplicated, divided, and interchanged” (1919).

•Think about an avatar.

Transgressing the boundary between natural and supernatural

•This transgression begs the question, to what extent does the representation, i.e., the creature, “represent” the original? Allusion: God created Adam in His own image. Victor’s creature, however, thinks that it is more akin to Satan than to God…to what extent is this a reflection on Victor, the creator?

Crossing the Threshold•Is there a point at which the Representation stops being a symbol and starts functioning (modus operandi) as the thing it once symbolized? In other words, when does the Specter reality become the Material/Corpus/Carbon reality?

•(in this abstract construct, what is the role of imagination? What value is “lived experience”? observed reality v. participant reality)

Distortion and the Grotesque•Are outward manifestations of evil/wickedness

or corruption a necessary prerequisite for monstrosity?

•The American writer Flannery O’Connor wrote in her lecture, “Novelist and Believer”, ▫Distortion…is an instrument; exaggeration has a

purpose, and the whole structure of the story or novel has been made what it is because of belief. This is not the kind of distortion that destroys; it is the kind that reveals, or should reveal.

•

Grendel, a classic “monster”

Boston Bombing Suspect, Dzhokar Tsarnaev (19 years-old)…a modern “monster”?

What is meant to be scary? Who is meant to be scared?

1933 “King Kong” movie poster

2008 Vogue magazine cover with LeBron

The Body Politic•Clearly we need to revisit and redefine or

deconstruct the modes, media, and discourse patterns we have historically used to define what a “monster”, especially since such frameworks have been used (in a political context) to marginalize some people as “The Other” who embody features, values, habits, and languages which are markedly different from those of the dominant group.