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.

"And isn't it ironic?"

"'My brave little man!' she said with her eyes shining. 'It was God did it you were there. You were his guardian angel'" ("The Drunkard," 84).

Allow me to point out to the mother that only one page ago, this "guardian angel" was drunk on the streets threatening and cursing at old women (68-70). One of the questions in the book asks about the principal irony in the story, so I've come up with a list of possibilities. The irony in this story, if I'm not mistaken, is situational irony, and here are a few examples of that within the story:

• As I quoted previously, the mother praised her little boy for being "brave" and his father's "guardian angel," praise one wouldn't expect going to a boy who drank an entire glass of porter (34).
• The literal "drunkard" in the story is the father -- drinking is his "greatest weakness" (11) -- yet the only character who gets drunk in the story is a little boy (whose age is probably somewhere around ten as he is on the cusp of being able to look after his younger sibling -- 15).
• The little boy saved his father from drinking during the story by means of drinking himself. Not . . . drinking himself -- "himself" is not an object of the gerund in my last sentence.

To determine the main irony in "The Drunkard," I can probably combine the three situational ironies above into one grand ironic statement. The little boy in "The Drunkard" prevents his alcoholic father from drinking and wins the praise of his mother by drinking alcohol himself.

A lot of people -- including songwriters -- have trouble understanding irony, so I thought I might help with this quote from Hank Green: "Alanis Morissette, when you get a death row pardon two minutes too late, that is extremely unfortunate. It is not, however, ironic."

"Water, water, everywhere" but not a "drop to drink"

"'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' / Nothing beside remains" ("Ozymandias," 10-12).

This is irony of the situational variety. King Ozymandias is "mighty," "cold," and "wrinkled"; those conceptions of him have survived for centuries since he ruled Ancient Egypt. Simultaneously, the words on the pedestal recall Ozymandias's "mighty works"; those works are nowhere to be seen. We expect Ozymandias's mighty works to remain because of his aforementioned power and might, but instead, the sand around his crumbled statue is "boundless and bare" (13).

In Ozymandias's case, people remembered the "despair" of his cruel tyranny longer than his "mighty works" lasted. It's a nice reminder that though our attitudes are not exactly immortal, our material accomplishments are certainly more mortal.

So, I was reading the introduction to situational irony, and I came across the example "water, water, everywhere" but not a "drop to drink." Like what happened with Ozymandias, this is the opposite of what we would expect to happen. I felt pretty cool because I knew exactly where this reference originated -- in Hank Green's song "This is Not Harry Potter."

(There was some verbal irony in that last sentence.)

Woolworth's

"So we went into the Woolworth's, and immediately I felt much more cheerful. Even now, I like places like that: a large store with lots of aisles displaying bright plastic toys, greeting cards, loads of cosmetics, maybe even a photo booth" (Never Let Me Go, 157).

When the Woolworth's was introduced as a place where Chrissie and Rodney get birthday cards, I highlighted it and annotated, "I've heard of that." Then I thought about it a lot and remembered that it was a significant place in the United States during the Civil Rights Movement.

It started with four black students who sat at a Woolworth's counter in Greensboro. They were not served because of their race, but they stayed at the counter until closing. Each subsequent day, more African Americans gathered at the counter as part of a large-scale sit-in.

I don't even know if the two Woolworth's stores are connected in any way, but I still wonder if the author choose Woolworth's for allusion purposes. I could easily draw a parallel between the students' sitting where they weren't allowed and Kathy's eavesdropping on Ruth and Chrissie. It's probably just a coincidence, but I'm going to pretend that it's an allusion. Either way, I think it's an appropriate choice of store.

". . . I'll stroll into somewhere just like that, where you can hang around and enjoy yourself, not buying a thing, and the assistants don't mind at all" (157).

One time, I went to Walmart for the sole purpose of putting stuff on my head, so I can totally relate to Kathy on this one.

I claim them all.

""'You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices'" (Brave New World, 237).

Like "rap music," "pleasant vices" is an oxymoron. I feel like I need to defend that statement -- vices are evil, and evil is not pleasant. The "vices" to which the Controller is referring are the voids of things like science, art, religion, and passion in the civilized world.

This oxymoron showcases the opposite values of Mustapha Mond and John. Mustapha Mond is willing to sacrifice science/art/religion/passion for stability. On the other hand, John believes that that sacrifice is taking away from the humanity in humans. He would be willing to sacrifice everlasting comfort for religion/God/freedom/sin. As John Green said, "The point of life is to be able to engage as deeply as possible with the miracle of human consciousness," and the civilized world in this book doesn't allow for that engagement. It's at 1:00:

On a related note, here's my favorite part of the book:

"'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence.

'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last" (240).

I liked that quote so much that I was sure I had heard the line "I claim them all" in another book, but I couldn't find it anywhere else. Hmm, so, really good quote.

Synaesthesia and Anagrams

"He wiped them on his chest, on his shoulders, on his bare arms. Delicious perfume!" (Brave New World, 143).

As John dug through Lenina's suitcase and later creepily watched her sleep, I found lots of imagery! In chapter nine, these images primarily illustrated the attraction John felt toward Lenina. On page 143, I found . . . "touch of smooth skin against his face," "scent in his nostrils of musky dust," and "curls, so touchingly childish." And you know what? I would be fine if they ended up together because, as I've pointed out many times, Bernard is obviously not her soul mate. Not that soul mates exist in the "civilized" world of this book.

The synaesthesia I quoted in the beginning of this post accentuated John's feeling of Lenina's presence as he stalked her and her belongings. I have a vague memory of reading The Tempest sophomore year, and there was something about smelling music, which is the same idea. I'm probably only thinking about that because John quoted Miranda for about half a page in the previous chapter.

On another note, at the beginning of chapter nine, John was standing among the "agaves." I had to look up what those are, and I learned that they're a group of American plants. Interestingly to me, "agaves" anagrams to "savage," and John was also standing among a lot of those in Malpais. I don't know if that was intentional, but I thought that was worth noting.

Speaking of anagrams . . . it starts at 1:25.

What kind of name is "Aldous"?

"'Going to the Feelies this evening, Henry?'" (Brave New World, 35).

Admittedly, as the point of view got really choppy and annoying at the end of chapter three, I wasn't very interested in Henry Foster's story as much as I was with what the Controller was saying. BUT there were a ton of cool allusions that I liked.

The quote up there is a reference to the "Talkies" of the Roaring Twenties -- movies with sound. I suppose they're "Feelies" in this book to make the world seem more advanced and (I don't think this is too far fetched) sexually free. Before that, the Director sat on a bench made of "steel and rubber" (33), two industries that thrived in that decade because of Ford's automobile. Then, near the end of the chapter, there was a huge focus on consumerism ("'I do love having new clothes'"), which was a defining aspect of the 1920s. All of this really makes sense with the idolization of Ford -- and the "Ford" thing really keeps getting more and more over-the-top.

I have one more quick reference that I enjoyed: "Our Ford -- or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters . . ." (39). The reason was inscrutable to the notebook students because they don't know anything about history, but luckily, I can tell you that Freud (who was influential during the 1920s -- go figure), was a psychologist who studied sexuality and impulse.

Fast forward to abooouuut . . . 2:05. It's number 23.

Also, if anyone was curious, "Aldous" is actually a legitimate name that comes from the German word for "old."