11.2

Mary Shelley’s monster, in Frankenstein, finds out that he is very different from everyone else around him. First and foremost, the monster realizes how grotesque his appearance is. The monster sees how other people look and then how he looks and understands why everyone is so horrified by him. Also, the monster differs in the way that he doesn’t have any knowledge. He doesn’t know how to do things like speak, read, write or interact with people correctly. But these things all come from his interactions with people. Once the monster learns to read, he has a connection with what he reads. He finally feels emotions. It is because he gains access to his emotions through reading that it is even more significant. He feels the most emotions from his use of the technology of reading, and reading is a technology that isn’t as straightforward as it may seem. What is written is what is there, but if you are able to expand your mind you are able to read and see so much more. The monster was able to do this and was able to better evaluate himself and see how different he really was.

I believe that reading or viewing movies can make people feel excluded. I believe that, in both instances, the user of the technology is entering a dream world in a way. The user can easily read or watch something that is just entertaining or something that is entertaining but also makes you think, much like a dream when you replay it in your mind once you break from slumber. But just as a dream can be something bad so can what the user reads or watches. An example that comes to mind is someone that sees something in a movie and sees only what they will never have or never be. The person can feel excluded from the activities in the movie or reading because they know they will never have the chance to participate in an activity.

Another take on exclusion and feeling different because of watching movies and or reading is a category that I feel at home in. That would be the idea of being so geeky or nerdy when it comes to books or movies that you are seen as an outcast or just as some one weird. I will use myself as how this can happen. I am someone that finds some of the greatest happiness by being able to watch movies over and over again. I also love to quote and use my knowledge of movies whenever I can because I feel it is one of the few things I seem to be able to remember and do well, but to others I am often seen as annoying or weird for having my life revolve around cinema. To solve the problem of feeling different or excluded I just found people that share this love and knowledge that I have. So I believe these mediums can cause people to feel different or excluded but there is hope.

Pip first achieves consciousness of himself by being threatened. An escaped prisoner threatens to kill him. He changes from a boy into something else. He begins to make decisions and do things he wouldn’t have done before, like stealing food from his sister’s cupboard. Pip’s situation is similar to the monster’s in the way that the monster begins to make decisions that will help him. He does things to get what he wants. He kills the family and friends of Victor to cause pain to Victor and to pressure Victor into creating a female monster for him. Pip begins to make decisions for himself so that he may save his life. He wants to ensure that he lives so he decides to do something that, only hours before, he wouldn’t have thought of doing.