How does one learn emotions, to love and to hate? According to Emile: or A Treatise on Education by Jean Jacques Rousseau, a child’s emotions develop as he experiences it, “It needs knowledge he has not yet acquired, feelings he has not yet experienced” (15). Like a child, the beast from Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, learns the ropes of society through his experiences. Rousseau’s theory of education by man (society and tradition), nature and things (experience) is reflected in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” through the beast Frankenstein creates with education by man being the strongest influence of beast’s growth through his development of human emotions. I will be discussing the initial development of the beast’s emotions from his time after he leaves Frankenstein’s apartment, his first subtle sensations turning into basic emotions. Next, I will discuss the event in which the beast was chased out of a village and how that treatment led him to go into hiding, where he then developed a sense of resentment and loneliness. Then, I will take into account what he learns through watching the De Lacey family, essentially learning how to speak and express his emotions. Finally, I will elaborate on his hatred for Frankenstein after he fails to create another monster for the beast to live with, which eventually leads to Frankenstein’s death and the beast’s subsequent misery.
One thought on “Introduction Exercise #2”
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What’s good:
You have all the parts of a strong introduction.
I like that you get straight to the Rousseau.
I appreciate the detailed roadmap.
You use a theory and a literary text.
Concerns:
I think your hook would be stronger if you left off the first broad rhetorical question. You don’t really want people to think about that question. You want them to think about what comes next, so get rid of the misleading question.
I don’t know that I quite understand your thesis. Either you don’t have one or it’s hard to understand as worded. I mean I know you’re saying that we can see some part of Rousseau in Frankenstein, but I don’t understand what your “so what” is. Are you just saying that Frankenstein illustrates that idea? A strong thesis will make a claim about how the way Frankenstein illustrates that theory affects our particular understanding of the theory. You want it to be a conversation (so it can just be that we can see how Rousseau informed Frankenstein. It is also that Frankenstein helps us to see and/or interrogate Rousseau).
However to be honest, you might be making this argument and I wasn’t clear. I found the following to be hard to understand: “with education by man being the strongest influence of beast’s growth through his development of human emotions.” I think you’re tacking on too many prepositional phrases. Can you explain your idea in more than one sentence, so I can follow each part of your idea.
You don’t really have a transition. I mean you kind of jump right into it. I don’t know that it’s the worse thing.