Miscontextualizing Quotes

"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose -- a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye" (Frankenstein, 2).

Bear with me in this post! Ideally, I'm making a good point.

I feel that this is the kind of quote that can get someone into trouble. Lots of people like to yank a quote out of a book and put it on their refrigerators and Tweet it and whatnot, even when the quote is at odds with the real thematic message of the novel -- here's an example of what I mean:

"The line is, 'What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?' Which I'll admit I did write in this book, but as anyone who's read it knows, I was kidding. That's something Colin Singleton, the main character in the book who's kind of a child prodigy, says at the beginning of the book, and he must spend the entire book learning it's bull" (John Green on people Tweeting and miscontextualizing a quote from his novel An Abundance of Katherines). Full video:

(By the way, if anyone wants to find and buy Holden Caulfield's hat for me, I wouldn't mind at all.)

Back to Frankenstein. Initially, I read that quote about having a "steady purpose" at the beginning of the novel, proceeded to salivate, and wrote it down on my note-taking guide because I thought it was a great quote. Don't get me wrong -- I still think it's a great quote if we understand what Shelley means by a "steady purpose" -- but taken out of context, it's a horrible reflection of the novel. This is what Victor says later on:

"A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule" (34).

Victor sheds a completely new light on the theme of tranquility through his anecdotal account of reanimating a corpse. Walton says that purpose tranquilizes the mind, but Victor expands on that idea by saying that too heavy a passion can actually disturb one's tranquility.

If you want to Tweet Walton's quote about having a steady purpose, by all means, go ahead. But don't blame me if you wake up to a giant creature grinning at you and reaching out to you in your bedroom.