– “All flesh is weak. All flesh is grass, I corrected her in my head.” – Chapter 8, page 55 (referring to Aunt Lydia)
– Shows the ways Gilead works to embed its ideas in everybody’s lives
– Contributes to the oppressive tone of the novel
– Euphemisms and Neologisms shows that language is destabilised, adding to the anxieties and worries as a part of the Gileadean life
– Ironic as they are the furthest from angelic
– Themes of voyeurism
– “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?” – Paradise Lost (A book about Satan being kicked out of heaven after trying to assume too much power)
– Playing God (Modern Prometheus)
– Paradise Lost – retelling Genesis – not just evil (explores the concept of free will and destiny (parallels to Frankenstein)
– The Commander reads from reads from Genesis the same lines that make the book’s epigraph, justifying and moralising the crude intercourse that will take place
-Free will and predestination
– Contrast between life before Gilead, and after (explore further in freedom and hope)
– Victor describes the monster as “beautiful”, yet repulsive with his “yellow skin” and “teeth of pearly whiteness” – Chapter 5, page 45
– “A thing such as even Dante could not have conceived” – Chapter 5, page 46
-Victor is defining the importance of his success in re-animating life
– Victor defines himself as a God (God is the only one who can create life – besides birth)
– Shelley contrasts God’s creation of Adam to Victor’s creation of the monster
– Victor sees his creation as beautiful and yet repugnant, versus the creation story taken from the Bible in which God sees creation of Adam as ‘good’