Cagey
It is that time of the year.
The weather is changing.
And for the last decade, this nip in the air has coincided with my teaching Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to my senior classes.
It works well to lead with this book because, as early as Labor Day, major department stores have their Halloween decorations for sale. I can pick on anyone to describe how Home Depot or Target defines Frankenstein.
Frankenstein has bolts in its neck, green skin, stiff arms and a club foot, right?
We then sail with Robert Walton through the ice of the arctic circle (how the book begins) and the students are sufficiently confused in order to begin to understand Shelley’s gothic epic.
Yes, if Frankenstein doesn’t confuse you, you have missed the point. There is no reconciling Walton, who meets Frankenstein, who tells of his story which includes the story of the monster, whose story includes the story of a family of cottagers. It is a story within a story within a story—written in one series of letters.
I love teaching this book.
The book has paid dividends in the remote learning environment. This is partly because this book is so pedagogically flexible, it pays dividends no matter where you put it.
We read as a class the monster’s account of learning in Volume 2, chapter 5. This is from the 1818 text, mind you. The monster describes acquiring knowledge as sorrowful business. The more he learned, the worse he felt.
Students are quick to understand why. The monster learns through observation. And learning only through observation means you are constantly learning about things you cannot experience.
How similar this is to online learning. Choose your subject. In the quarantined classroom, you are forced to learn about topics without the ability to apply that knowledge to life. Without social interaction, we all, I wager, are feeling a little monster-ish. Maybe that’s what we call, ‘cagey?’
There is no end to the challenge the book presents to the reader.
Whenever the students feel comfortable in their knowledge (a major role as teacher is to make them incessantly uncomfortable with all they do not know) I just ask, “Where is this story taking place right now?” At various times, a student’s best response is, “In a cave in Mount Blanc” or “In Walton’s cabin on the ship.” And while those answers are clever, the only place where the story physically takes place is in Margaret Saville’s flat in England. For she is the recipient of Walton’s letters.
As Shelley added layers to her text, quarantine has added layers to my teaching of it.
While I sit in front of an empty classroom and insist, through a camera, that students marvel at this narrative complexity, my son sits at a desk outside my door, attending online school.
If you’ve followed this blog for long enough, you’ve read and understood my son in many different ways. You have also, perhaps, come to understand that he is very much an old soul. His soul is older than mine, in fact.
And much of this miracle of the mundane stuff is simply my acknowledgement of everything my seven-year-old teaches me. Sometimes, I have more to learn from him than he has to learn from me. Humbling, yes. But moreover, this experience, this miracle, is radically transformative.
Here’s what I mean.
As you can imagine, my son wants to take my senior British Literature class rather than his second grade math lesson. While I close the door when I teach to help him focus on his work, he spends his breaks listening in on my lectures. He has also seen many clips I show students from all the wildly inaccurate film versions of this story.
I’ve apologized to my wife privately for the nightmares he has experienced as a result of this. And I apologize again now, publically. But the poor kid can’t get enough.
At the bottom of the stairs last night.
“Son, go back to bed.”
“I can’t. Every time I close my eyes, they like jump open again.”
“Is it Frankenstein?”
“No. No. No,” my son said. He is acutely aware that I would remove his viewing privileges if it was. “I’m just imagining this huge monster ripping the roof of our house and, you know, grabbing me up.”
Yes. I’m sorry. Truly. But I’m also not sorry.
It is my (sometimes our) parenting philosophy to not treat kids the way Disney treats kids. I’ll have to let you know in a decade if such gambles pay off.
Back to the point. My son, that night, refused to go to bed until I told him the whole story of Victor Frankenstein, including how the novel ends. So, I did. And while glossing over the gorier aspects of the tale, I didn’t withhold any pertinent details.
Here is the gist of what I told him: The monster kills everyone Frankenstein loves in order to make his creator feel the pain of being a monster with no one to love him. The monster then lures Frankenstein, who is sick with vengeance, to the most remote and icy portions of the globe.
“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” my son said. “If Frankenstein had no one left to love him, then why doesn’t he just love the monster?”
“I guess he couldn’t see past the pain the monster inflicted on him.”
“Well, if the monster doesn’t have anyone to love, why doesn’t he just love Frankenstein? Then they would both have someone to love.”
I’ll be damned.
Never, from my time studying this book in a master’s class, to my decade in teaching it, have I or anyone else come to this conclusion so quickly or matter-of-factly.
“Son,” I said. “You are a Romantic, through and through. That just might be exactly what Shelly wanted people to realize.”
He finally did go to sleep.
I am wishing all my readers companionship. As adults, we have ways to foster loving relationships without risking transfer of this virus. Call someone and tell them you love them. And, if that person is struggling, ask if that person feels like hurting themselves. If recent experience has taught me anything, it is that you will never regret the conversations you have—you will only regret the conversations you were too busy to start.
Tomorrow (October 13th) I celebrate 13 years of continuous sobriety. Thank you for being a part of my journey.
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Thanks Mark! A small quibble (one that took me years to fix in myself); please call him the Creature, not the Monster. A powerful case could be made for calling Victor the real monster—an irresponsible parent who also abandons his wife and in his rage for revenge endangers countless others. Congrats on 13 great years!
Appreciate this, sir.
And to continue our conversation, which bled into email and now back here: my last class decided to call the creature “Chad”.
And they agree: you don’t mess with Chad.
Mark – Congrats on your “golden birthday”. I am about 5.5 years sober. Thankyou for the Miracle of the Mundane! It arrives when I seem to need it most and gives me perspective. This journey is not a private rain storm.
I’m glad, Bob. I hope you continue to experience the miracles of the ordinary. It’s great to hear from you. Wishing you the best!
Mark
Hi Mark,
I thought you might find this an interesting article about addiction to grievance. Happy holidays!
https://apple.news/A1mDLzq4NSYuZTckVRxXEqA
—Bob
Thank you so much for this resource, Bob! Very thoughtful.
Big E. Has so much to teach us! Thanks for sharing his wisdom with us.
Thank D. Hope you guys didn’t freeze your **** off this weekend! Lol.
You were always a beautiful person…..even when you were in “Mercury Retrograde.” You grew up in a crazy house, with Taylor your exemplar of sanity. It’s hard to follow perfection, so you were left with bad boy Peter who actually chewed and swallowed his cheat sheet so Mitch couldn’t get it away from him.
All three of you are brilliant and it buoys my spirit to hear you are an English teacher working with a “framework” narrative. FRANKENSTEIN is so relevant to our lives when everyday brings an example of a child ravaged by a cruel parent. Rousseau believed we are born innocent and experience teaches us cruelty…..how would you feel if your father rejected you because you were ugly? Love would have made SUCH a difference! It always does. I love books and loved my students. Danny always tells me that what I did made such a difference…….I hope so!❤️
Zendy! You know, they say that when the student arrives, the teacher disapears. One day maybe one of my students will wind up teaching English and I’ll be able to feel the same.
Appreciate hearing from you! And many thanks for all your help along the way. Say hi to Danny for me, please.
Mark
At university I took a class called Victorian frame narrative. Books, including this one, in letter or diary form.
I still remember it. 24 years later. I love this style and hold some day like to write like this…someday.
You have a wise son. Perhaps it is because his dad is willing to discuss the world with him. What a gift.
Congratulations on 13 years tomorrow. That is an even bigger gift.
Anne
Anne – it is always so good to hear from you. I can’t seperate anything I read from you from “stillness and peace”. Thank you for continuing to support the blog and check in and say hi.
He is wise. Beyond his years, really. He’s got a lot of work to do when it comes to that second-grade drugery work. But when he is struggling I give myself consolation knowing that he gets the big picture. We’ll take all the time we need to help the rest come into focus.
You and me both wish to write like this. It is such a brilliant book. Wishing you a great week,
Mark
Congratulations on 13 years of sobriety!
Thank you Deborah, so much! I’ve been celebrating all week and feel really good about it. Appreciate your support.
Mark congratulations on your recovery! You are a power of example to me especially in your willingness to communicate with family and others.. Also thanks for letting me drift freely around your site.
Since zoom became my AA fellowship I found myself back at a the original W Barnstable Men’s Big Book 12 Step group. Here the Big Book Step Study meeting took it’s name, was signed on in New York and local intergroup back in 1982. I was there with the first dozen or so members. Sometimes I feel it was just me.
Little did I know the impact that time period would have on me, AA as a whole and the many who struggled with their admission of hopelessness. A BBSS meeting is quite commonplace today. The camaraderie still stands even though over such a long period of life many if not all of us have still not grown new legs. Many like myself gratefully live as emotionally handicapped men in the Great Fact. Many bits and pieces of others good and bad. The Spiritual second chance is the new thread woven into our existence..
Anyways.. The monster shuts off he doesn’t sleep. I head outside myself tangled in my own denial, cutting deals, settling for less and less. Clinging to the security of anything sinister. I’m losing as my unresolved issues bubble up covering what was courage and strength just moments before. I was Spiritually awakened to my new day but now? Now the people are here. I am surrounded. A rarely seen or heard lesson in humility shows itself from the center of the unruly crowd. An upper class room created by my piers for looking down on me specifically. Yet the pitchforks and torches are left at the door. I welcome the kindness as if their first move, knowing it is certain death. I can’t trust. I can’t communicate. It’s always my defense. I am always the monster. Your kindness is killing me. I hate myself, you must hate me too. Nobody likes a monster. Nobody likes me.
I am overwhelmed with distortion of my self imposed crisis.. The noise of my own hats and horns, the paper cuts on my face from my ticket tape parade. The pain from rotten teeth and another mouthful of sweet cake. I have said too much and choke. Now the extremist, the overly self-centered? The narcissistic jerk. Again I am suffocating inside a losing battle. A self-will run riot guy unable to stop..
I stand in my group on the rivers edge and while others skip stones in amazement? I am throwing rocks at the Spiritual flow. Doing what they do over and over expecting the same result. More rocks, more ripples? More control..
Flirting only with my arrangement of chaotic images in the carnival mirrors I choose. The people I want to please must fill my emptiness. I am them? I need them? How can I be them so I can have them for myself. The reputation I enjoy. The high self worth. At my best I am still the people worshipper building on my sandy foundation daily. It’s my beach party, the tide is high and these are my hostages. All is well for now. My hope is someday all people will like me so I can like myself always. Until then I crawl back. I recede to the safety of my sand pit of despair. The foundation handles only my weight, my weight alone in my empty castle..
I am everything yet invisible.
My 38 years of yesterday’s AA sobriety enters the room ahead of me to clear my path into another’s stolen moment. The 24 hours crew? The 5’s 10’s and 20’s even 30 year mates respect themselves by not putting me in my place. Bigger than life yet small and fragile. They see me. I do appreciate the compassion and although I myself am blinded by selfishness? Some know the truth, the big secret. 38 years of daily Big Book 12 Steps can surely take it’s toll.
In 38 years a man can fake his own death many times. The AA survivor bobs and weaves seemingly for no reason. The assassination attempts on the Big Book sponsor are usually done in private.. Too many 5th Steps witnessed. Endless heartbreak as if acted out from the same script.. The daily exposer to the downtrodden, the hopeless, the addicted. Wallowing in self-pity, a lonely place of impending doom where God has no name. No man’s land where fortune and glory live behind doors locked on both sides.. Learning the addict is an addict first no matter the frothy emotional appeal, no matter the kindness, the love and good intent. The addict in the grips of their addiction will suck the life out of you if you let them. Many of us have found ourselves a pile of bleached bones more than once. Picked clean.
Why me this time? I’m saved again. Not born again no, that was long ago. Just saved, I can see myself and once again I am saved. My willingness has appeared? My best enemies have offered their hands and I grab hold.. As the quiet comes, the peace, freedom returns. I have shut my mouth. I pray to quiet my mind. I am nolonger the monster. Surrendering to those who have come after me also, not just comparing to those who came before. I pray my God would have all of me. Give me strength, let me see. This is their meeting in their day, this is their life too. I am not alone now. I may still be the elephant in the room yes? It’s just I nolonger block the door.
Saw this very late. But thanks Sherp. I love hearing from you.