What does Montag mean by an "illusion of autonomy"(384)?
385:
Why is the absence of the French Revolution in Frankenstein surprising?
Why is sympathy for Charles I in Frankenstein surprising?
Explain how the quoted passage demonstrates this sympathy.
Who were the new elites?
386:
Why were the new elites " forced to mobilize the plebian masses" (386)?
Explain: "The mass mobilizations necessary to destroy the old
world order effectively blocked the creation of the new" (386).
How does this concept relate to Frankenstein?
387:
Why, according to Montag, did the newly created working class resist
industrialization?
Who were the Luddites?
In what ways does Frankenstein's monster become identified with the
proletariat?
388:
Explain: "The very logic of capitalism has produced the means
of its own destruction" (388).
389:
Why is it "too simple" to say that "the monster equals the proletariat"
(389)?
Explain: "We do not leave the work in search of its historical
meaning but seek the meaning of its historical existence within it" (389).
Why is a text's historicity "inescapably . . . present in the form of
a conflict" (389)?
390:
Explain: "Frankenstein has been the instrument of science" (390).
391:
Explain: "Scientific and technological progress . . . introduces
separateness, division, and antagonism into the social world" (391).
How exactly is this true?
392:
Why is it important that the actual process of creation in Frankenstein
is not discussed?
Explain: "Technology and science, so central to the novel, are present
only in their effects" (392).
393:
How does clothing the scientific in theological terms allow the narrative
to protect "itself from the reality that it describes by casting a veil
over that reality" (393)?
394:
Explain: "He is the sole embodiment of the industrial in an otherwise
rural world" (394). Who is "he"?
395:
Explain: "Frankenstein's monster is finally not identified with
the working class of Mary Shelley's time but with its absence" (395).
To what time, according to Montag, does this text "turn backward" (395)?
Why?
