When my love swears she is made of truth

Shakespeare here does not just address his lover’s lies to him, and I’m getting the feeling that she’s probably cheating on him, but that sometimes in life it’s easier to believe in a fantasy than in real life.  Shakespeare believes in his lover’s words, even though he knows them to be false.  Intellectually, he knows that it can’t be true, but emotionally, he it’s just easier to pretend that they are.

And it’s not just his lover that is having some problems with telling the truth, but so too does the speaker.  He knows that he is getting older, and that his best days are behind him.  He has hit and gone past his prime, but he not only refuses to acknowledge that fact, but lies about it to himself as well as to his loved one.  And it brings to mind the question, why is it exactly that he must lie about that, and why is it that his lover lies about being faithful?  His answer is that love itself is inherently deceitful.  That love disguises itself as trustworthy, but in reality it is often by necessity inherently false. 

Both the speaker and his lover are aware of the fact that they are lying to each other, but neither cares very much, partially because old people don’t like to be informed of their ever-increasing age, but mostly because, by lying to each other, it allows them to ignore their respective weaknesses, for one, the guilt of cheating on the other, for the other, his age.

Age seems to be the biggest factor to the speaker, almost as if he is simply glad to have love despite his age.  But, though he has love, he seems very detached from her, given that he shows little concern for her lying and cheating.  At its most base, the poem is concerned with the speaker’s insecurities about his own advancing age, and his need to not only lie to himself about its existence and the complications and weaknesses it brings, but his need to lie to others in order to decrease his own ability to acknowledge it.  By lying to each other, they in fact relieve their own burdens by pretending that the burdens don’t exist.  Sometimes it’s just easier to believe in the dream.

In fact, in line thirteen, the speaker goes so far as to say that the reason that he is together with his lover is because they are lying, their very relationship is the vehicle through which he tries to purge his insecurities.  He does this through what I think is a rather clever double meaning with “lie.”  Additionally, part of the reason that he seems to agree with her lies is that he wants to seem inexperienced to her, like a younger man would be.  He doesn’t just lie to her directly about his best days being behind him, but he lies to her through his pretended belief in her own falsities.  This, of course, doesn’t really work, but she too, suppresses the truth in order for them to continue their rather stupid repartee. 

Is the Monster the Monster?

I feel for the monster.  Which, to those who have read the novel, is not an unusual feeling, which is part of the reason that I am upset that the general population has an image in their minds of the monster being a dumb, unthinking fiend that should be eternally hated.  This, I feel I can contribute to the film industry.  Especially since the 1931 edition, where the monster was portrayed as both mute and beast-like, has the character been constantly abused by Hollywood and the public.  In response to such general lack of knowledge of the monster’s tragic and enlightened life, I write this.

Initially, the only fault of the monster is his own hideousness, he has yet to commit the horrible deeds he would later in the novel, and has yet to garner the animosity towards his creator that loneliness and rejection would later give him.  He is a fresh creature born into a world that hates him, he is implied to be kind and gentle by nature, and only society twists him.  The monster, and I almost hesitate to call him that, as Frankenstein seems the true monster in the book, is innately good.

As he was “born” to Frankenstein, it would make sense that as a result, Frankenstein would have a just responsibility to both the monster and society to educate the creature, and give it care.  Like Adam, the creature should have been nurtured by his creator, and given a companion.  But this was impeded by two things.  First, the monster was physically hideous, just absolutely repulsive, and flaws in not just Victor, but all of mankind led him to hate him because of his physical deformities.  Humanity’s inability to tolerate that which is different from us or our surroundings led to Victor’s rejection of the creature.   Secondly, Victor had no control over his creation, the monster was physically more powerful than he, and, as is evident from the monster’s eloquence and knowledge of Milton and French, the monster was equal or superior to Victor intellectually.  This problem in particular led Victor to deny the creature happiness by refusing to create him a mate.  Unlike God and Adam, Victor would have no control over his monster or its offspring with its mate, and thus considered it immoral to release a possible race of these creatures upon the Earth in opposition to nature and mankind. 

Given that it is clearly Victor’s fault that the monster felt rejection and despair at his situation, one must inevitably come to the atrocities that the monster committed.  Is he truly evil for having committed them?  I would argue he is not.  Society made him, not his own nature.  The monster was depressed by a life in which he was doomed to be alone forever, and as a result of his repeated disappointments in both Frankenstein and humanity, it is only to be expected that he would lash out.  Understandable that he would want to hurt his creator in the most intimate way possible, by killing his loved ones.  Perhaps his crimes need not have been so horrendous, but when considering the way in which he was doomed to live his life, and the way people treated the creature, it can almost be considered inevitable that he would act out in such a way. 

Myself as a Literary Scholar

As a literary scholar, I have had a rather narrow focus.  I have a preference for reading the classics, particularly non-fiction.  I’ve enjoyed philosophical texts, such as Plato’s Republic and the Symposium, as well as historical texts such the The History of the Peloponnesian War, or Livy’s monumental History of Rome, even going so far as to teach myself Latin to better understand Livy’s ideas, or those of Cicero in Rhetorica ad Herennium.    Don’t get me wrong, I’ve certainly read such more modern classics as Great Expectations, or Robinson Crusoe (of which there is also a Latin version…), but they have certainly been no particular emphasis or effort to read them.    

Classical texts hold a certain appeal to me, a rather romantic notion in fact.  They’re old, incredibly old, and yet, despite the time and language of their writing, they remain not only relevant to today’s society, but often, are still incredibly valued (Rhetorica ad Herennium for example, is still widely used as a rhetoric textbook two-thousand years after it was written), and the fact that something that displaced in time can still be relevant and interesting really appeals to me.  In addition, they don’t just give out information about their subject matter, but give additional details about the societies that they were created in, from the social jabs of Cicero to the admiration towards government from Vergil.

The problem is though, outside of school, I’ve only ever read books for pleasure.  I have rarely made notes in a book I have read for fun, and more rarely still do I attempt to analyze the book for theme, or the author’s underlying intent, or the reasons he or she used this or that word or metaphor.  I suppose this makes my prior reading rather shallow, though, in my humble opinion, rather broad. 

The vast majority of my in-depth reading has been the result of school and literature classes therein, and as a result, the number of individual books I’ve read deeply and with critical thought are relatively few, outside of a few favorites (The Great Gatsby being one of them).  Despite my shortcomings in terms of volume, I feel that my skills in being able to devise what it is exactly that an author is trying to say, and analyzing the ways in which they say it, are quite developed, not to the level I hope to achieve through school this year, but at least sufficiently enough to begin with. 

My particular shortcoming, however, comes from poetry.  I have had little experience reading poetry, nor any particular drive to do so.  This is a deficiency I hope to overcome during this year.  The causes for this are varied, but result mostly from a lack of interest and exposure.  I have rarely had to deal with poetry for any extended period in school as of yet, and there are very few poems that have really caught my attention, though I am rather fond of “Invictus” and “If-,” especially the prior.  Unfortunately, I feel that this might be an issue for me, given especially that the AP test contains a very large amount of poetry questions.