Romanticism: Gothic to Apocalypse: Being Human

Over the semester, the thought of monstrosity has evolved my mind, and with it, the notion of its lighter twin humanity. As much as I tried to get away from this theme of monstrosity, it seemed to infect many of the texts that we read like a plague, and it intrigued me. Monstrosity seems to take over the humanity side of literature and people, the lighter side of humanity leading into the darkness that is monstrosity, but the beauty of being human at some point shines through over the welcoming abyss of the monstrous.

        For most of the literature that we have read, it seems to be the human mind that is the very essence that monstrosity itself comes from through an overflow of emotion. An obvious example of this is from Shelley’s Frankenstein. In it, Victor Frankenstein strives to actually create life. This was his gradual downfall to him giving into monstrosity through his desire of discovery to be on the level of God after he saw the raw power and beauty of lightning and what it could create as he relayed back to Robert Walton, “I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak . . . and so soon as the dazzling light vanished the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump . . .. I eagerly inquired of my father the nature and origin of thunder and lightning. He replied, "Electricity” (Shelley, Frankenstein). It is his drive to re-create life that leads him to creating the monster, but because of it, he falls to his human side of distorted wonder. "Ambition drives Frankenstein to create the monster in the first place, and without it the tragic ending of the story could have been avoided completely. Had he contented himself with ordinary scientific pursuits like the rest of his colleagues, none of his family would have been murdered. As Frankenstein has learned by the time he lies on his death bed, even a purely innocent intention can blossom into a full-blown disaster" ("The Relationship between Frankenstein and His Creature"). And honestly, it was after reading the graphic novels that Frankenstein truly scared me because I could see myself falling into the same trap as Victor did as well because there is so much beauty in power and dreams. For a brief second, I could feel a flicker of that desire in me, and I wonder how terrifying it must have been for Victor to see himself in his creation as well. As +Maposa said in the post “Dreams” in relating to “The Expedition to Hell” by James Hogg, “People had a dream that they tried to create, but then they lost control and it became a nightmare. Of course, this was the picture that came to mind.

This was used in my presentation with Cassie for Monstrosity and Education focusing on Frankenstein, and after our presentation, one of our classmates Maia went back to this specific picture from our slides. This was where she talked about the doppelganger effect that is used for Victor Frankenstein and the monster and how it was interesting that they both have the same face. From there, both Alex and Mitch pointed that this could be a symbol for the relevance between the creator and the creation. Though Victor was the one who made the monster, he saw himself in the monster; and perhaps that was what scared him the most, that he could see a reflection of him in the monster or the monster in him. These may be just mere stories of fiction, but even fairy tales come from reality. Every lie is derived from the truth at some point. As my high school English teacher told me, authors write from what they know, and this is a part of what authors such as Shelly knew, that this monstrosity, and the humanity thereof, is our story.

The same is seen in the poem “I Am” by John Clare. As Thomas H. Schmid says in Addiction and Isolation in Frankenstein, “The real horror in the sufferings of a Frankenstein’s creature, a Victor Frankenstein…is that such experiences can never be adequately communicated to “normal” members of society, to those who have not been similarly exposed to the ‘dark truth’; the real horror is to be alone in the knowledge of that truth” (Schmid, Addiction and Isolation in Frankenstein). The continuous spiraling path down to loneliness and despair of having nothing else is what drives them to become monsters.

From the second stanza of “I Am”,

“Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.”

It is as +Rose Thassally’s “Reaching for More or Humanity is “Never Satisfied” says as she talks about this poem, “the need that people have to want something beyond all sanity is frightening in and of itself because we recognize that theirs a limit to when we just have to stop, but obsession can of course drive people to do insane things…” The unknown of our capacities and the overwhelming emotions lead us to becoming more monstrous than we can imagine.

Leading on from that, +Urizen’s post “We are the Monster,” expands off of this discussion. In Urizen’s words, “Those researching stem cells, splicing human and animal DNA and other areas are accused by their detractors of “playing God”… We are the children of the mob and the monster. Which leaves us with a question. Will we be the children of Prometheus? And what does that mean? Does it mean reaching to lofty heights and falling miserably, or does it mean daring to reach beyond what is known into the unknown, and carry the ‘fire’ of knowledge and science as far as possible, no matter the cost?” This was something I related to in my post “Monsters and the Unknown” as well, that the monster itself could very well be dwelling on the inside of the human mind. Still though, with monstrosity comes the humanity part of us. It is similar to demons and angels. In our minds, demons and angels are two completely opposite creatures, one surrounded by pure light while the other is encased in treacherous darkness. Yet, we fail to remember that these two creations came from the same body as seen in this picture below.

Demons emerged from the holy angels by a surge of emotion and empowered pride, and from that, they were torn away from their past bodies as angels to the distorted demons that they are known as now. Monstrosity itself was made from what is human about us, curiosity, discovery, the want and desire for more. Yet, an over-power of emotion and the humanity in us crosses over that fine line towards monstrosity. From that bloomed this thought. What makes people monsters, and if we as humans can become the monstrosity, then can we very well become humanity?

Take William Blake’s “Songs of the Innocence and Experience” for example. In this, the monster is obviously not an actual creature that was made from spare animal parts and lightning, but both have one thing in common – the human reason that resulted in the monster that was created. Rather, the monstrosity is seen from the human race itself as the innocence of a child being stripped away from the children in slavery because of the human desire or need for prosperity. These were young children forced to do harsh labor, and for us looking at it now, all that can be thought of is where is the humanity in this?

Even just looking at this picture makes my stomach churn uncontrollably, yet this was what Blake wanted us to know that we had succumbed to through his poems. Tearing them away from their family, selling them as piece of jewelry, taking away their innocence – this was the monstrous activities that the human race had succumbed to. One has to question if there is even a place for the pure human heart to reign again, but even Blake didn’t write his poems merely to show the monster that they had become. As we mentioned in class when we read these poems a couple months ago, he wrote to change the mind of the people and draw them back to humanity for as the book Kino no Tabi states, “The world is not beautiful, therefore it is” (Sigsawa, Kino no Tabi). Blake saw that this world was not a beautiful one. In fact, it is a rather monstrous one. Humans can do such terrible things, but there is still beauty in the human race, and there is beauty from the monsters because there is beauty in humanity.

Perhaps one of the best stories to show the beauty of humanity is from John Keat’s “Lamia.” In it, he describes, for lack of a better word, a monster. More specifically, she’s a serpent-lady. And through it, he uses his words to paint a picture of this monster, but rather than giving her grotesque qualities as expected, he exposes her beauty though she was a demon.

“Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d; 50

And fill of silver moons, that, as she breathed,

Dissolv’d, or brither shone, or interwreathed

Their lusteres with the gloomier tapestries –

So rainbow-sided, touch’d with miseries.

Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake 65

Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love’s sake,

And thus; while Hermes on his pinions lay,

Like a stood’d falcon ere he takes his prey.”

He tells of her beauty instead of the monstrous side of her, using “volcanic imagery so there is this feeling of burning away her old form to create the new one” as +Maposa had said. She may have been a serpent and quite monstrous to the eyes, but she had human features that related her to humanity and gave her beauty.

Of course, humanity does not always come so easily. Even Frankenstein’s creation was grotesque in looks, and as +BIGred13 pointed out, Victor’s desire for creating something beautiful turned into a monster. However, the beauty of humanity does not lie in the easy or pleasantries of life. Rather, it dwells in the human desire to not allow the darker emotions control their actions to where their dreams have become nightmares. Because, “If Lamia demystifies the sentimental romance, it similarly demystifies naive realism. Lamia demonstrates that we cannot help but see romantically: it is only through such selective seeing that it is possible to discriminate identities at all” (Endo, “Seeing Romantically in Lamia). Lamia did not simply become beautiful through John Keats’ words painting her in romance. No, she grew beautiful because she was human. She felt pain; she felt love; she felt desire. She felt herself become more than the monster that she was because she knew through Hermes, she had a way to cross over that line to humanity.

Loneliness, curiosity, desire, power, passion, dreams – these are all elements that can’t simply be hidden away as part of human nature. They are not things for us to be stripped of either for they are what makes us human, but one foot too far into allowing it to consume the human mind and dangerous monstrous things can from within. That is the trick to being human though and maintaining our humanity because the world is dark and monstrous and filled with many treacherous things, but beauty of humanity is still everywhere.