LITERATURE QUESTIONS
THE GOTHIC NOVEL
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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They provide relief from the real world.
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They prophesy future destruction.
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They are part of the unconscious controlled by science.
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They obscure deep emotions.
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Detailed explanation-1: -There are really two main “dreams” in Mary Shelley’s original Frankenstein novel: Victor Frankenstein’s daydream about the grand future effects of his creating artifical life and the nightmare into which he falls after he recoils from his finished creature in revulsion and exhaustion.
Detailed explanation-2: -Immediately after the monster comes to life, Victor has a nightmare involving a vision of Elizabeth lying dead, and then transforming so that “I thought I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms.” This vision foreshadows that Elizabeth will die, and that her death is in some way connected to the monster.
Detailed explanation-3: -The novel records Frankenstein’s awakening from a similarly happy, impossible dream. The difference is that Victor’s fantasy of childbirth yields to waking nightmare not because his waking reality contradicts it, but rather as the very result of the fantasy’s being fulfilled.
Detailed explanation-4: -Victor’s dream in chapter 5 foreshadow’s the death and misery that his creature, the product of his experiment, will produce. He sees Elizabeth die and decay before she turns into his mother.