"Ever since that fatal night, the end of my labours, and the beginning of my misfortunes, I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy" (pg 43).
Quick note: 100 posts, success.
Quick note #2: My title rhymed.
As you can see in my above post, Victor describes his creation as "fatal," but in the sense that it killed his happiness, career and sanity. It's ironic because in about seven pages, Victor believes a new form of fatal within the creation.
This year I have gotten so much better at noticing strange diction that authors use to set a tone. When I read through it, I thought that it foreshadowed that the creation would kill someone, but now that I reread it, I realize Victor was using it in reference to his labours. This brought up another question for me to answer though - why would Mary Shelley be so redundant with her writing. See, this quote could either be a list of three or two depending on how you read the list. Is "the end of my labours" a clarification of the night, or is Victor describing three ways to interpret the same night, because it would be clear given later hypotheses of Victor that the night could be interpreted as "fatal." This is why I hate grammar. The ambiguity of this parallelism is driving me insane.
Okay, I wouldn't say that I hate grammar because it does save lives.
Oh, and let's not forget Andy Grammer.
Max Browning:
ReplyDeleteWithout Shelley's serial comma, the reader would logically assume that both "end" and "beginning" refer to "night," which is evidently not the intended meaning. The intended meeting is a series of three -- made apparent by the parallel structure and the serial comma. All hail the serial comma!
This issue is a primary reason that as president, I will create a federal council of nine (not unlike the SCOTUS) that would act as the authority on grammar in the United States. I've long believed that one of the country's most pressing dilemmas is the lack of such authority. Accordingly, I will make every effort to rally against the potential "Keep the government out of my grammar!" protests.
See, you say logically, but judging by my confusion in the structure- granted many things in English confuse me- it was not completely a logical statement. Also, "night" could logically be interpreted as both a beginning and an end when the beginning of misfortunes happened as a direct result of the end of the labours.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I love British spellings.
I maintain my stance that "night," "end," and "beginning" are all sovereign nations within an international alliance. In other words, they make a series of three. It's all in the commas.
ReplyDelete