I always enjoy seeing a story told
in different perspectives or mediums. There’s something intriguing about a form
of art being represented in a new way. The graphic novels serve to highlight
concepts in Shelley’s Frankenstein in
the same way that a movie changes your idea of a novel. I read Annie Proulx’s
Brokeback Mountain for another class so I’ve really been thinking about different
retellings of stories and these graphic novels furthered that thought process.
Frankenstein’s Womb reminded me of
Dicken’s A Christmas Carol in a way with the concept of time changing. The
past, future, and present had a collision in this story and I found that really
interesting. The past leads us to the future and the present gives birth to the
future. “You die, Mary, giving birth to the future.”, was an interesting line
in Frankenstein’s Womb. The comic served
to cement Shelley’s novel in a place in time that exists within a certain
culture. Obviously scientific revelations of the time had a huge impact on
writing, and this novel was certainly affected. I enjoyed the almost “prequel”
aspect of the comic. This was the imagining of Shelley’s inspiration for her
novel. This story hasn’t been told as thoroughly or examined as closely as the
novel. The process that causes an author to create a story is just as important
as the story itself so the imagining of Shelley’s experience with the castle brought
more to her novel even though it was obviously fictional. It is the same idea
as Baum’s Oz books, its just interesting that a story be continued in whatever
direction one might take it whether it is a prequel type story or not.
I was
disappointed that the preview of the other graphic novel ended. My thought
process with this was that I couldn’t figure out what makes a “picture book”
version of a novel so interesting. I
guess it’s pretty obvious, though. It’s the same reason why we show children
animated movies. At the most basic level…pictures are cool… the graphic novel
takes the imaginative aspects of the story as a whole and brings it to the
forefront. We don’t have to imagine the scene because its there for us.
I never thought of that line as having any significance but your right Mary does open up a whole new world of luiterature by creating Frankenstein. In a way Frankenstein is just as monstrous as the subject matter, because it causes people to radically rethink idas of certain things and how science relates to our society. watching Mary realize how the creature relates to her and her relationship with her mother was mindblowing. mixing timelines was a stroke of genius because it really hits home with how much society changes due to ideas brought out by her book. ethics brought about through literature, isn't that the entire point of Science Fiction and Fantasy, to bring about truthes and ideas for the benefit of society.
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