Joyeux Noel: Review and Commentary.

  How do you do, 

  Merry Christmas to the readers where ever they may be. In this festive season of the year, I am willing to do what was overdue back in 2014 and look into the movie about the Christmas Truce. Joyeux Noel is the film, which is French for "Merry Christmas", released in 2005. As the title suggests, the movie is foreign to Americans. It's a French film, mostly, directed by a Frenchman, Christian Carion, and starring French actors supported by British and German stars that most Americans have never heard of (those of us in the States are familiar with Diane Krueger from Troy and few others). It is sad I will say that we are now a century since the United States entered the war and there is no apparent similar one to happen between the German Army and the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) as far as I could find. I will say that it provides an interesting story. 

  The movie condenses the whole truce, which happened in isolated or sporadic locations along the Western Front into a fictional account without any actual officers or enlisted men involved, though the German Crown Prince appears in two scenes. It's something to remind me of the way The Battle of the Bulge (1965) did where the entire battle along the Ardennes is reduced to a small, limited action in one place (and climaxes, strangely, in a barren desert with low rolling hills) while fictional characters meet without ever involving Generals Eisenhower, Patton, Peiper, or van Rundstedt. In a way, the action makes it more allegorical and allows each nation to be represented. 

   The movie opens with images of tranquil scenes from the Edwardian period, sort of giving the modern viewer a snap shot of a world long forgotten. This is later replaced by a school room setting where a lone boy recites a poem to empty desks, sort of implying they are the voice of the nation they represent (France, Great Britain, and Germany, in that order). The French child gives a speech that is very poetic, yet subtly xenophobic, as it talks of the people calling for relief in Alsaac, the place France lost in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The British boy is more blunt and sounds like someone calling for genocide. The German lad is more defensive and puts blame on England as the natural enemy. The innocent voices of the boys reciting this war like poem is indeed tragic and has to be heard to be believed. Then we see the war begin. 

    One thing I note on how things are tied up in book ends in the movie is illustrated by how the main characters are in a setting. For example, the Anglican priest, Father Palmer, is introduced in a church with one of the two boys who knows and he is lighting candles that go out as the door they depart from is opened. He is then left looking at the candles that are now smoking and ponders on how the two could just run off into war. At the end of the movie, he hears a sermon by his bishop that ultimately makes him lose his faith, thus the candles become the symbol of it. In both his first and last scene, he is near a temple of worship and is puzzled by the conflicting nature of war and Christianity. When he tries to be the peace keeper in the situation, his superior makes him out to be unfit for leadership in spiritual matters. Rather or not Father Palmer would be able to keep up his stretcher duties as an unofficial priest is open to interpretation. Then there is the couple of opera stars, Sprink and Anna, who first appear on stage in what looks like a Wagner show. They are playing lovers who are apparently doomed by forbidden love and Anna is shown singing the "Ave Maria", which may make the opera be a Schubert one. Gradually, the movie has it where they are always separated by outside circumstances in real life as Sprink is called to active duty and is sent to the front. Eventually, Anna goes there and convinces the generals to let them sing a duet at the Crown Prince's party. From that point, she goes to the front and they sing to the troops. When the officer in charge finds out of their sneaking away, he tells Sprink he'll be arrested and sent away while Anna will be brought back to Berlin. Instead of letting that happen, they desert to the French who escort them to the rear. Where next is anyone's guess but I would like to think of them fleeing to the US as it was still neutral (until 1917) or they found their way to Denmark. Then there's Lieutenant Audebert starting out by arguing with his father, a major general, about being with his men. He departs from the story in the same manner. He would rather be with his men than take up being an artillery officer where he would be safer.
    If there is one thing I catch from all this is that the movie contains alot of anti-authority themes in each plot thread. Audebert has his father to deal with. Then there is Sprink who is disillusioned from war. At the start, he walks the halls as the center of attention (he is the star of the opera, after all). He likes the attention and his willingness to sing for everyone puts him in a situation that should have gotten him killed in normal circumstances. Then he calls out his superior officer for being willing to return to business as usual after the truce and the fraternization. His officer, Lieutenant Horstmayer, deals with his own when meeting the Crown Prince near the end. The Crown Prince, who somehow is given command near Lens, even though he was actually in the Verdun sector, is shown as boorish, arrogant, vain, and pushy. He stumps out the harmonica of one soldier as part of their punishment in the box car, which he states they will never see their families as they are sent to the Eastern Front, and he sneers at the lieutenant's Iron Cross medal, "They give that to just about anyone." Since the character revealed to be Jewish, it would seem a casual Anti-Semitic remark, but in reality it's that the medal, used for acts of bravery, is worn by what he perceives to be a coward. A British major in command of the Highlanders is seen as the mean officer that no one likes, but can't do anything of it because of ranks. He never stays for the truce, only shows up after, never leads in battle, and chews out everyone in his line of vision. So, the best thing done is Father Palmer escorting the man out of the trench in his "short cut", similar to how General Weberly of White Christmas doing to his replacement, which turns out to be a hike through the latrine. A soldier fires in the air and makes them drop, getting the major covered in human waste. It's meant for laughs and the British lieutenant permits a little laugh for a while. Palmer gets his with the Bishop, thus bringing in the religious authority's authority into the mix.
    The authority figures here are in the rear, mostly, and dictate how the war is to be fought and one. Neither will end until the other is defeated (the Bishop even says they must kill every German, lest their sons would have to do so again). Meanwhile, the protagonists are the grunts of the armies and their respected lower officers who are sent to do all the dirty work. In this period, most of the men had never been out of their country and the idea of multiculturalism was almost none existing at the time. So, it accurately shows the way the two sides greet and gradually warm up to each other. Even an atheist in the German Army tries to bring up the one Scotsman who mourns his brother for champagne while everyone else is attending a service. Needless to say, the man turns it down. Two soldiers encounter a cat who goes between them and they give the cat different names, which reminds one of battles having different names, or regions. As to the officers, they communicate in English, mostly, and talk of visiting places. Horstmayer had visited Paris, once, and he and Audebert even plan to meet again after the war. Then there is the shot of a soccer match held, which from accounts did happen. The Saxon regiment took on an opposing army, and plenty more where the games were held within their own. One could imagine several of the British Tommies cheering one team over another in the process, if he would like, though I can't find anything that would support that.
    When the every-men of the group had met each other and learned how they are alike, it certainly made them question the war. One French letter suggested that Poincare take Lorraine himself. So, the authority figures crack down. The French are removed to the Verdun sector where they would later be fighting in one of the greatest battles of that war. If they came out of Verdun as heroes, all sins of the Truce washed away, I am sure Audebert and his men would later take part in the 1917 Mutinies as well. The Highlanders are disbanded and scattered while replacements take over. The Germans are sent to the east with replacements brought in. This prevents future fraternizing. So, the movie ends on a bitter note that the authorities have won by moving the little guy away from his new friends. Yet, with the way the Germans are heard singing "I'm Dreaming of Home", introduced to them by the Scots, it does present a kind of hopeful message that the underlings are not completely defeated (ironic, since Germany is defeated at the end of the First World War, but the British and the French are also destroyed in another way. One shot shows Audebert standing alone on the front where there is nothing but ruins, snow, shell holes, and graves, while his orderly, Ponchel, lies dead. That basically shows that while the Allies win, it was a hollow victory). In a symbolic sense, the war itself is the antagonist of the movie. It's impersonal, it's inhuman, and it kills all, destroys all, and feels nothing. Because it is an idea and not a person, war can be vilified like it does here, and it causes the leaders to become priests in a pagan religion who say the gods demand sacrifice and the common man becomes the sacrificial offerings. Yet, for one shining moment, from Belgium down through France to the Swiss border, over a million men in different uniforms, speaking different languages, made peace to celebrate the birth of one who took it on Himself to be the sacrifice and end such sorrows such as war. The Bishop gets it wrong in thinking the soldiers are on a holy crusade after reading that passage. When including the following verses, the reading goes:

Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's enemies shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me.[1]

What Christ was talking of was a spiritual war fought within us, where we place things before God and people before God. That last is something that is not brought up in the movie, but anyone who studies the passage will know it so. The Bishop thus is hypocritical in the fact he puts his country's hostility and war before his God's holy wish for peace and goodwill. His interpretation is also Old Testament, as though he were trying to be like Samuel to have the Israelites kill all the Amalekites so that their nation wouldn't be threatened in the future. No doubt, the atrocities committed in the war were alarming (excluding the baby bayoneting, as that was propaganda), that would pale compared to World War II with the Holocaust dwarfing them all. In a symbolic sense, the division comes true where Palmer is now opposite of his own bishop, and everyone else, at the end of the movie. 
    The movie does leave out a few details. For example, the British suffragettes actually petitioned for peace in 1914 with a letter addressed to German and Austrian women. Also, on the eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Pope Benedict XV, requested a ceasefire on Christmas between the fighting nations. As you would expect, no one heeded his call. The lack of such reference to the pope is the reason why I don't view Palmer and his bishop as Catholic, despite the Bishop crossing himself at the end of the sermon. While the aftermath is shown, the movie doesn't dwell too much on the consequences where future truces of that nature became rare and far from in between. In fact, after the great battles of 1916, a bitter sentiment had come upon the fighting men that prevented such. By the time the United States enter the war, all tries to a Christmas truce had ended and the closest thing came a year later with the 1918 Armistice. Considering that nothing like it seemed to have happened during World War II, it's a bet that the aftermath was also the death of that sort of chivalry. We have degraded to the point that we don't respect the sanctity of certain days or months that soldiers will fight regardless (and the irony is some of the recent examples have happened near the same part of the world where Jesus had walked the earth). We could go into debates on the differences, but it will detract from this review.
    A few things to bring up include the content. For a war movie, very little of a war is shown. Just a raid on the trenches a la Saving Private Ryan (two minute warning, someone vomiting, a pep speech, all before they charge in to the machine gun fire) followed by everyone eying the other. There is an artillery bombardment near the end of the Truce where the two sides use each other's trenches for cover (ironic in a way that the Allies wanted to get into the German trenches and did so in a different way than planned). The profanity is minor, mostly something done by the English speakers, while despite the warning on the label the sex scene is brief. I like how Christian Carion artistically made it where Sprink and Anna simply kiss passionately, then black out, and then fade in to reveal them in bed, with Sprink baring Anna's backside, (though the male audience is denied seeing Diane Krueger's buttocks), they grunt in a position, and then are suddenly dressed for the duet. Of course, we do see two beetles copulating in the French trenches, something that Audebert later draws a picture of. Father Palmer, an Anglican, provides the religion in the movie, with most of the soldiers being Christian, of various denominations, besides the German lieutenant being Jewish. Anna sings the "Ave Maria", not once but twice in the movie, though neither the Bach or the Schubert versions. In accuracy, the movie gets it right to some degree and misses mark in others. For one, I can't figure out how Horstmayer, Audebert, and Lieutenant Gordon of the Scotsmen could be all well dressed with immaculate uniforms after weeks, or months, of trench warfare. If their orderlies found a way, it's plausible. But their enlisted men didn't have ways of cleaning and the washing machines of the time were primitive. Sprink would have done the cleaning and delousing before meeting Anna and it would have taken hours. It would be more accurate if actual smudge was shown. Then there is the fact the Bishop concludes his sermon with "The Lord be with you" to which the soldiers reply "And also with you." This use to be used among Catholics in the Mass, after Vatican II, and I have found that Episcopals and Anglicans had it in reserve while the more accurate "And with your spirit" ("Et cum spiritu tuo"). If they actually had "And also with you" at the time, I wouldn't know, but it has been said that Catholics wouldn't responded that way, which is why I wouldn't see the British clergy in the movie as Catholic, regardless of what TV tropes claims.
    Though rated PG 13, Joyeux Noel is a good enough movie to be viewed on Christmas, even after the Centennial of the Truce has come and gone. It offers one a way of seeing peace being made. It reminds me of what He who we celebrate as being born on Christmas stated, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called Children of God." No doubt, the men who made that peace will be blessed, and the same to any of the leaders who have the conviction, be they Jew or Gentile, be they religious or none, to put aside their differences and break bread together. If more of that happened, we could actually have peace on earth and good will toward men.


^1. Matthew, chapter 10, verse 34-37. Douay-Rheims version. 

Dracula: Vampire Epic of Good and Evil

    How do you do and happy All Souls' Eve to y'all, 

   The book that also was read by yours truly in high school is Bram Stoker's Dracula, the great novel that features vampires, if not the most infamous. This was something I read as early as 8th grade and it stuck straight through high school and college. For the most part, it was because it was an miniature epic, with many tropes of one that you might find in The Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia as well as Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The basic epic of an embodiment of evil opposed by a group of unique individuals: the every man, the brain, the scientist, the female hero, etc. So, Dracula is basically those epic fantasy novels, only on a smaller scale and it preceded them all. Of course, it has been adopted to film very frequent, such as the famous 1931 movie with Bela Lugosi as the Count, the 1960s era with Sir Christopher Lee (the man most of you know as Saruman, Count Dooku, and Willy Wonka's father) as the Count, opposite Peter Cushing as Professor Van Helsing, and many other films. For the most part, they rarely got some of the elements of the novel right: often excluding scenes or characters and relying on mythology to tell the tale. So, the book has to be taken into account to really see how the Count is in Stoker's book (and despite the use of the title, he is not going to start counting like in Sesame Street).

  The book's narrative is mostly a series of journal and newspaper entries that basically are eyewitness reports of the Count's actions. In short, it's an epistolary novel. In such a novel, characters do the narrating as opposed to an omnipresent narrator covering it all. It works to a degree with Dracula, though a suspension of disbelief may be required as the characters who write in diaries are shown making detailed descriptions and recording conversations while most of us only do it in a few sentences. You can read Anne Frank's diary and see an example of that. The result of that is something that requires disbelieving in the fact Dr. Jack Seward could memorize and quote verbatim his conversations with Dr. Van Helsing or Harker could jot down the Count's speeches as it they had it all dictated to them, or getting it all transcribed, where most of us could barely remember a conversation of something that happened for real. I could give examples of my own, but that is distracting from the analysis.

   From this kind of storytelling, we get a picture of the novel's plot. In the spring (possibly of the year the book was published, since it doesn't even include a year, let alone those annoying 18-- seen in some novels), a solicitor named Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania on an errand to arrange the purchase of a house in England by a count named Dracula. The peasants are scared for Harker's safety and one gives him a crucifix for protection, though Harker seems amazed at the Count's politeness. Scholars of Stoker will point out that there is apparently a backstory, which was published after his death as "Dracula's Guest", though if you read the text you might not see Harker's name mentioned and the events are never brought up in the chapters. The Count is the last person you would see at the front door, yet he greets Harker with a lamp as though he were a footman and gives Harker a room and food while they discuss the house and being in British society. However, as time goes by, Harker begins to notice things out of the ordinary. The Count has no servants, which is the first clue of things unusual. Then he notes the Count doesn't cast a reflection in mirrors or shadows on walls. He sees him crawl on the wall like Spiderman twice and seems to know when the wolves are near. Eventually, as summer arrives, Harker deduces he is not on business, but is held prisoner by the Count who is not really alone. The three ladies appear once and one tries to "kiss" him, only for the Count to hold her back. Eventually, he believes he is imprisoned by vampires, one of whom has something in mind for England. 

    The novel then cuts back to England during the summer where Mina Murray and Lucy Westernra are introduced. Lucy announces her engagement to Arthur Holmwood, later Lord Godalming upon the death of his father. Arthur has friends who also courted Lucy, Dr. Jack Seward, head of an insane asylum, and Quincy Morris, the American gentleman to serve as the token minority trope (a modern update would have made him a black man for that purpose). Lucy and Mina celebrate the engagement by going to Whitby and then a Russian ship called the Demeter arrives with her captain and crew dead (just like in the climax of The Lost World: Jurassic Park). From the captain's log, the Count has gotten aboard the ship via boxes of earth and feasted on the crewmen during the long voyage. An investigation is made after the Demeter crashes into the harbor in the midst of a strange summer storm, where the log book reveals all. A dog was reported to have jumped from the ship. No doubt, the reader knows the dog is actually the Count, who also morphs into a bat to monitor his victims. During his stay, he causes Lucy to sleep walk into a cemetery where he has his way with her, before Mina catches up and startles them. Lucy reveals to have no knowledge of the event and Mina thinks it was something with her sleep walking. In August, she gets a letter from Hungary that Harker is in the hospital and ill. She then goes there and he recovers in time for a makeshift wedding to happen.

    While Mina is away, Lucy grows ill. Jack enlists the help of Professor Van Helsing, the one character the journals refrain from calling on a first name basis. Van Helsing and Jack Seward occupy this section of the book, removing Harker as the protagonist. When they see Lucy, they see she has weakened and lost alot of blood, some how, from an injury to the neck that doesn't bleed. To be less redundant, I'll say that four blood transfusions are performed: first with Arthur, who arrives unexpectedly that morning, then with Seward, then with Van Helsing, and finally with Morris, each time fills her veins but doesn't reverse the illness. Van Helsing suspects and gets garlic in, once. Then the Count gets a wolf to escape from the zoo, which later breaks into the Westernra house and give Lucy's mother a fatal heart attack. Lucy dies, also, on a later date, and arose from the dead as a vampire. Evidence of her is from the empty coffin in her tomb and the reports of children being met with by the "Bloofer Lady". Van Helsing then has the three men gather and they do away with Lucy the Vampire and allow the real Lucy to sleep in peace. That is when Van Helsing learns of Mina and Harker, who tell him of the Count, which allows him to connect the dots and decide that Count Dracula is a vampire from Romania come to feast on English blood. 

    They all decide to oppose the Count. The men go about to destroy the coffins that the Count sleeps in while placing Mina in the insane asylum where Renfield, a prototype Peter Pettigrew to Count Dracula's Lord Vordemort, if you will, resides and catches flies. Of course, they are sorry for it when Renfield reveals the Count has been coming in to the building, and he has been drinking Mina's blood. The men rush upstairs and catch the Count in the act. Mina tells them that the Count threatened Harker, which basically makes the event akin to rape. Worse, the Count gives slip and destroys their documents to hide all evidence of his existence (though another copy was kept hidden, which is why one needs to do the same) while taking his remaining coffin and robbing a bank to secure a passage home. The group go into Europe, while Mina is given protection from the Count (resulting in a scar on her head) and tells them of his location in hypnosis.

   Eventually, they race back to Transylvania. Van Helsing and Mina go on ahead and face the vampire women who attempt the lure the now partially a vampire Mina to their side. Van Helsing kills them and makes the last coffin sanctified of the Count. The rest catch up to the Count who is driven to his castle by Gypsies (more on that later) where the climatic scuffle ensures, ending with the Count defeated, Mina cured, though a hero is lost in the process. The epilogue reveals that Mina and Harker then have a boy, named Quincey, and he said to one day understand how brave his mother was.

  The age old battle of good against evil is played to the eleven in Dracula where the Count symbolizes the ultimate evil as a vampire. While the synopsis above shows all, the Count does not get his own point of view written down. In fact, even being the title character keeps the Count from being present for most of the novel. We first "see" the Count in his castle to welcome Harker in and see him in his actions there. Once out of Transylvania, the Count is held back to add in suspense. Kind of like in some monster movie where very little of the monster is shown in order to make it more scary. In likewise manner, Count Dracula keeps from showing up other than in his disguises. He is spotted and identified by Harker in one scene[1], appears to threaten Renfield, then visits Mina where he is forced to retreat from the sight of a crucifix. For all his power, the Count never fights the heroes personally, because they pull out religious symbols and he retreats before them (otherwise even the combined efforts of the five men are no match for the Count). The one time he faces the men directly is in the bank[2], which ends in a short time after springing away and giving them the slip. After that, we don't see him again until the final show down where he is killed. So, of the 371 pages in the book, the Count appears a small fraction of them and has very little dialogue, apart from his speeches in the first four chapters.
   On the matter, let's talk about the Count. Through Bela Lugosi's portrayal in the 1931 film, we see him as something of a gentleman in black with the heart of a libertine, a fallen angel to be redeemed in love from a reincarnated wife like in Bram Stoker's Dracula, or the epitome of the vampire count character that inspired Count Van Count (a child friendly vampire who doesn't drink blood, can walk out in the sunlight with great ease, and like to count just about anything) in Sesame Street or Count Chocula. All this, of course, is popular culture re-imagination. In the book, the Count doesn't resemble anything in the movies (though Gary Oldmen came close with his mustache). For most, the closest to the book in any portrayal is found in the silent film Nosferatu, a German film made without permission of the Widow Stoker, and done with the changes in everything from setting to character names (even the vampire is renamed). At least with Count Orlaf, he has the creepy enough vibe that you wouldn't want to run into him anywhere (especially at night). It shows the main thing with the Count that he is not someone you would want to visit to sell Bibles or go while Trick o Treating. For all that, there is something to mention when discussing Count Dracula.
    Vlad III Teppes seems like the name of a dead white man to our eyes (most of us wouldn't even known how to pronounce it) but believe it or not, the man they called Vlad the Impaler, is the inspiration for Dracula. Given his reputation as a blood spilling warrior, all the keep Romania from falling under the Turks, it might seem justified to make him a vampire. Of course, some of it is artistic license and some of it is mistaken. The real Dracula wasn't a Transylvanian Count, but a Wallachian Prince[3]. He was ruling over a principality in modern Romania, which will include Bucharest near the end of his life. His father did own a town in Transylvania, but that doesn't mean Dracula was a count in there. Both father and son got the name Dracula from the name Dracul, which derived from the Order of the Dragon, a fearsome creature, which also means "Devil." So, in short, Stoker made him Count Devil, which is even used in one chapter[4]. This is something of the Western mindset as the current Republic of Romania views Vlad III as a national hero, just as we in the States view George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. In both cases, there's a man of his time who takes center stage in a nation defining era and leads men into battle more than once. There, the two, or three, differ. As referenced in the book, Dracula led armies into battle against the Ottoman Turks. He got the name Vlad the Impaler for having his enemies impaled on the battle field where they died slowly and painfully. Say what you will of Washington owning slaves and Lincoln suspending Habeus Corpus, but Vlad the Impaler had methods of fighting the Turks that if done today would be considered atrocities, such as beheading envoys under the promise of keeping their turbans on (but he was defending his home against an invader, after all). One thing interesting was prior to that, Vlad was held hostage in Turkey where he learned how to ride horses and do philosophy (both of which he would use against the Turks later). Besides Turkish soldiers, he also impaled Saxon merchants who allied with enemy Boyars. Of course, like with Lincoln, he was killed by his own people who exiled him to Hungary while the Turks eventually took over Wallachia and placed Vlad's brother in the seat of power.
    The portrayal of the Count is also the ideal character of the Vampire Villain, or Villain in a Coffin, which I brought up in The Nightmare Before Christmas: Review and Commentary, though more active than Oogie Boogie. The Count has awesome power: he can control the weather, control animals, and people, apparently. He can turn himself into a mist or into any animal know. He can go from young to old at will. He also has the strength of twenty men. It's no wonder that he is someone to fear, yet he does require a coffin because he draws his power from his native soil, because apparently British soil doesn't help. That is why he placed Romanian dirt in his coffins before sailing the seas. The daylight makes it harder for him to be active, also, which is why is mostly seen at night (good thing Stoker doesn't have the last fight happening on the Winter Solstice when the night lasts very long). While in his coffin, the Count is helpless and needs minions to do his dirt work, or rather transport him places. That's where those Gypsies came in and they do so for the honor of serving a noblemen, if they are not under his spell. Finally, the fact that he spends time in his coffin in the day suggests frailty in him, as Harker could attack with his spade without notice and vampires are killed with a stake in the heart in the same way (and they sleep with their eyes open). When vampires are in their coffins, they are very vulnerable and don't even defend themselves from an attacker.
    One thing that is disappointing to readers when reading the book is how the Count is defeated. For the most part, his defeat is anti-climatic because all that build up to catch him before the sun sets doesn't come with a proper pay off (that stake driven into his heart). Instead, the Count is killed by Harker slicing his throat with a big knife and then Morris drives his Bowie knife into the Count's chest. Yeah, you read that right: the Count is defeated by conventional blades after all that build up of vampires repelled or killed by religious artifacts, which is something that some people might think of in another case of an unstoppable monster. If you ever go to San Antonio and see the Alamo, you'll actually find the chapter quoted when talking about Bowie's famous knife, where it's treated by Texans as a source of pride in knowing the weapon made in honor of the fallen hero at the Alamo is the same that kills the vampire (ironically, in both cases the man wielding the said weapon die). I'm sure readers from Texas looking over this or reading that part of the book are smiling big with that knowledge (which says something, as Jim Bowie wasn't a Texan but from Louisiana; an American expatriate who became a Mexican citizen and later rebelled against his adopted country, led his fellow rebels in minor battles at the start, only to be sick in bed during the war's most famous siege, where he was practically, already dead by the time the Mexican soldiers came over the walls). Well, enough with that rambling.

    Stoker's novel contains many of the Victorian British perceptions of foreigners. We have the idea that noblemen are "noble" if they are British while continental ones are villains, that Eastern societies are bizarre and backward, that Hungarians and Romanians are superstitious peasants or Gypsies, Americans are cowboys, and Dutchmen speak pidgin English and yet are able to think things out better than most can. This in contrast to that English men are saviors of the world and women are represented as ideal women: either as sweet and chaste damsels like Lucy or resourceful mother figures like Mina (the latter can be seen as a strong woman with the way she handles herself in the struggle). It basically does make Dracula rather Anglocentric in the way it views the world, and the Count's arrival seems like an invasion of the continent into Great Britain, the center of civilization in the 19th Century. In fact, there is the deal of the Gypsies in Transylvania who are slaves to the Count. It is the fact that they work for a nobleman, but in this case it does fall on some perception of what we call "Romani" who exist outside of the popular European circles with their bizarre rituals and hidden knowledge. Their ability to tell fortunes and read palms is a stereotype, some of which they played up for money. I have no doubt that Stoker knew how they were perceived in public and was willing to go along with it by having them serve the Count. They intercept Harker's letters and return them to the Count, transport him to the dock to be sent to London, and transport him to his castle. In the climax of the book, they prove to be tough fighters, yet are easy to scare. (I am sure some of them may actually read the book, but skip over the negative portions, but don't take my word for it.)
    At the same time, Stoker subverts it. The British characters do a lot of talking, yet the Dutch born Van Helsing can also think and he does some action against the Count. At the same time, the American Quincy Morris is brave and bold, as well as self sacrificing. There is even a Hungarian nun who nurses Harker and sees to the makeshift wedding between him and Mina. An innkeeper and his wife were also nice, and wise as the latter suggests that Harker not go into Transylvania and even hands him a crucifix. Even the Russian captain is viewed as a hero by the English population and given a proper funeral, as opposed to believing him insane.
    One noticeable theme in Dracula, that sometimes comes with the Vampire Mythos, is sex. Using the basis of the old Demon lover mythology, the Count illustrates sex with his bite and some ritual action that could be considered penetration. Much of it is not described in the book, but the vampire bite can be likened to a hickie, that thing teenagers sometimes give each other at certain levels of their relationship. I have even been told that the vampire's fangs are practically phallic, which could explain the common image of the vampire as a male who seduces a pure and virgin woman. Then there is the Count spotted by the Harkers on three where he has become young, with a pointed beard, and staring at a young girl, as though to combine a negative image of a Jew with a pedophile. The last does bring up a negative implications with the way the Count targets certain victims. In fact, the sort of scare among white men of interracial sex between white women and a non-white man can be noticed with the way Stoker has the Count target the women. Here, two young, English mortal women are seduced and corrupt by an ancient, Transylvanian vampire man, in what is not only interspecies rape, but a classic case of the older libertine debauching the ingenue. Reading between the lines, we can see the Count with Lucy in a way we wouldn't want to think of (and the 1992 movie had to show it) which is really the Count taking advantage of Lucy's state of trance. No surprise as some of the Victorian erotica played on the fears and gave women a window to sexual desire with fantasies of rape (often an English woman with some exotic man from overseas). In Stoker, the vampire is in place of a ravaging Turk, an Arab sheik, a Mexican bandit, or a jungle dwelling native.  Mina later has a dream of a mist coming into the bedroom and seeing two red dots that form into a face, which the reader no doubt knows is actually the Count bending over her. When she narrates her tale, the Count makes her drink some of his blood from a chest wound. Once more, one has to read between the lines and realize this is some kind of fellatio. Even the way Seward describe the image is likened to it. Modern readers might not notice it, but the Count has hairy palms that Victorian readers believed is the result of masturbation and would have thought when the Count is in his coffin he was getting his kicks in ways one would in the privacy of home in the drawing room (no doubt, any of the men, or even Stoker himself, knew someone who kept secret rooms for private viewings of art, as opposed to going out and spending pounds to a syphilis afflicted prostitute). This could make a vampire the metaphor to the 21st century as an obsessive stalker and serial rapist, though I won't compare vampirism to AIDS or any STD as it demonizes the victims of either or.
    While the predatory advances on the women are well known, the book also has men being victims, though most of it is off screen (which is something homosexual readers might be grateful for). The Count does threaten Harker, though the crucifix keeps him at bay and it seems he is saving him for his wicked purposes only to toss him to the three vampire women. The descriptions of vampire attacks on men are instead done with the opposite sex. The three vampire ladies (whom the description of invokes an image of the Sanderson Sisters from Hocus Pocus in my mind) come upon Harker and talk of kissing him, a euphemism for sucking his blood. One thing to take note is that they are willing to take turns and let the prettiest of the bunch go first. Another thing is two of them have the same brows as the Count, implying them to be cousins, or sisters, of his. Later, once Lucy is a vampire, she is seen as completely different from her past self. One could liken this as an example of the Madonna / Whore complex where the sweet and chaste Lucy is delightful as a mortal woman with all the dreams of becoming a simple wife of an earl, now becomes ugly and voluptuous as a vampire, molesting children and even attempting to seduce Arthur. The fact she wears white while a vampire adds another mockery, that sort of feeds into some men's worries over the bride in the upcoming marriage (or discovering the angel he married is in reality a blood sucking monster), and Lord knows what other kind of image that gets one labeled a misogynist for thinking of them. Of course, when Lucy is a vampire, the men have no cure for her other than a stake driven through her heart and it's done by her fiance (which almost goes on par with honor killings if he were already married to her). When Mina is seduced, the men know what will happen and decide to kill the Count before he converts more and Harker is willing to sleep with his wife despite the fears of what she may do to him (even make love to her, as Van Helsing shoos all out of the room when the two get into an embrace at one point[5]). However, they are delaying the inevitable and if they fail and Mina becomes a vampire --- well, that is something they regret might happen and then it's Lucy round two.
    The thing of the foreigner coming after the English women was something brought up and will be mentioned here. We get the case of a group of white European males, three of them of English stock, pitted against the Count who embodies a non-white foreigner, in what one could say is a reuse of the narrative of a white man defending his home from waves of minorities. Once more, it makes white women objects to defend and the seducing of them from the minorities makes them damaged goods who are no better off than to be forgotten or killed. It's the sort of thing rehashed every time I hear about the Muslim immigrants going into Europe, today, and the hysteria of white people bred out through Africans taking white European women in the process, all in the name of Multiculturalism. Those people who speak of that are basically using that same old narrative that makes white women objects and minorities as villains (and people who talk of white women being made for minorities like in certain Youtube channels are equally guilty of objectifying them, this time as objects of sexual conquests). At the same time, the cure to vampires has a connection to the minorities of the said locations where reports are made of women being killed for getting raped and some are executed after converting to Islam. No doubt, they are also having their narratives that make women objects of value and men who defend them be heroes against wicked minorities.
    Now, I know some of what we know of today did not exist in Stoker's time. Somehow, outside of fiction, the Victorians seem to have a much greater respect for women (a woman was ruling the world, by the way) that the idea of objectifying them was abhorrent to them. Some of that respect is seen in the book, also. Harker does fret over Mina learning of the vampire women and doesn't say anything negative about women. Best of all, while the men have their faults the one person to really hold it through during the worst of it is Mina. She thinks things through quicker than her own husband, she assists Van Helsing in solving the mystery of Lucy's demise, she gets to Renfield better than Seward, and she can hold her own as opposed to the beta male like Arthur Holmwood. Given that she takes so much during the book, almost becoming a vampire, yet is able to assist in getting group to oppose him and think out a logical escape route of the Count, Mina is a strong woman. One thing I admire with Stoker is unlike Hollywood, he lets Mina be beautiful and smart at once. Though she takes a shot at them, she is also one of the "New Women", the forerunner of the flappers, the feminists, the butch girls, and other sorts of women who are ingrained with Women's Lib that some of us have come to know and take for granted: the women who do more than the domestic actions and take on male occupations. Mina's role in secretarial position in learning shorthand and stenography might not seem much to modern women, but in 1897 she was very far ahead, in contrast to Lucy whose goal is to marry (selecting an English lord in the process). Ultimately, Lucy's traditional stance is what kills her while Mina perseveres, which suggests that Stoker was aware of the times; that women like Lucy were fading away and women like Mina were the future. Lucy might not make in the 20th Century, but Mina could[6].
    The century is enough to bring up several things of technology. Mina writes her journal with a typewriter, as opposed to making entries on computer like today. Jack Seward records his on a phonograph, which is just like some would speak in a recording device, and today it's now easier to find a specific entry, unlike in the book. Van Helsing's blood transfusions are a breakthrough of the time, though dated as nothing is said of blood typing (which is useful as the wrong type would have killed Lucy) and the method of storage blood for future blood loss is not thought of because it didn't come into practice until 1913. Scenes in London, in stark contrast to Romania, reveal people using bicycles and automobiles, the telephone can be found in an office, and the city is lite with lamps. Even with travel where Van Helsing arrives in London on the day after receiving a telegram from Seward, which seems fast to the reader if no consideration is given to the steam ferries and the trains that cut travel time from Amsterdam to London down to a mere day where before it took two or three. The train has even made it possible for Harker to reach Transylvania in a week (today the airplane would reduce that to three hours) with a few more days travel by road. Contrast to the Count's means of transportation by boat that takes weeks to reach Varna. Some of those have been updated since the book was published.
   More importantly, the way Dracula is an epic novel is the theme of good against evil clearly presented. True, it's a bit slanted with the Christian men on the good side and the Gypsies on the bad, but we can pardon the latter as the Gypsies have no malice to the English but are merely obeying orders, as well as the standard West against East. The actions of the vampire illustrate evil through the way it mocks many aspects of Christianity (Lucy's tomb scene is a ghastly remake of the three women discovering the empty Tomb, for example). The theme is more presented with the Count as the embodiment of evil as he plots and plans to conquer civilization, represented by Great Britain, and make everyone his minion. In line that is used by Tolkien, the band of heroes seeks to prevent that and it requires leaving the comforts of home to do it. As we see in the journal entries, the humans all have lives: Arthur was planning to marry Lucy, Mina and Harker were to enjoy a happy life as a couple, and Dr. Seward was making his work in science, yet all of that was put aside because they were fighting a war against an invading force that sought to ruin their lives. Or better yet, from a theological perspective, is there to ruin everyone's souls.

Notes:

1. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. (1897) Page. 179.
2. Stoker. Pg. 311-2
3. Lallanilla, Marc. "The Real Dracula: Vlad the Impaler." Live Science.
4. Stoker. Pg. 279.
5. Pg. 314-5.
6. Boyd, Kathryn. "Making Sense of Mina: Stoker's Vampirization of Victorian Women." (2014)

Bibliography. 

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Originally published by Archibald Constable and Company in London. (1897).

Boyd, Kathryn. "Making Sense of Mina: Stoker's Vampirization Of Victorian Women" (2014). English Honors Thesis. 20. http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/eng_honors/20


Lallanilla, Marc. "The Real Dracula: Vlad the Impaler". Live Science. www.livescience.com. (2017).

The Nightmare Before Christmas: Review and Commentary

How do you do,

    There is a reason scripture says "do not plow with an ox and an ass"[1]. The ox has strength while the donkey has speed; the ox will be guided to the right direction while the donkey is stubborn enough to not heed, unless some treat is held ahead; the ox is patient in work while the donkey will make much noise. In other words, they don't agree with each other and work will be unproductive without unity. 

    What does this have to do with the movie? It is to illustrate the point that the film has in the story: unless they are episodes in a characters life, one can't have a story with Hallowe'en and Christmas.

    Hallowe'en and Christmas. In the old days, it was easy to tell which is which because they both have differing histories, yet were only the same in being set up by the Christian Church in the Medieval period in place of old Pagan holidays.
    Christmas was set up as the celebration of the Birth of Christ, though the Holy Bible does not give us the exact date that Jesus was born. From clues, it can be assumed His actual birthday was in the spring, but the scientific research suggests Jesus to have been born in the month of June. We don't even have the year, being either 6 or 4 BC. It was settled to have the celebration happen on December 25 which was mere days after the Winter Solstice and coincided with the Roman festival of Saturnalia. This ancient festival was largely something like Marde Gras is today, with the festivities concluding with gift giving, consisting of presents made of wax. With the advent of Christianity in the Empire, this celebration fell by the wayside and the celebration of the Nativity took shape. Another ancient festival was that of Yuletide, a Northern European sort. This one involved decorating household with ferns and evergreens to keep a bit of spring during the winter while the god Odin would visit with presents. Today, these have passed on as the Christmas tree and visits from Santa Claus. The word Christmas come from the Anglo-Saxon "Christe Mass", meaning "Christ's Mass", and it was originally a season and not just a day. Beginning with the vigil on Christmas Eve, Christmas became a twelve day season that continued with additional feast days and ending with the Epiphany. In the Middle Ages, this season was also when people went into the Festival of Fools (like in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). In short it was something like Marde Gras. The modern celebration of Christmas is more recent, having its origins in the Puritanical societies of England and America, where carolers would sing carols for a treat and make mischief if not appeased, before the more family friendly picture from the Victorian Era.
     Hallowe'en differs in lacking a Biblical account to origins. Instead, we have the ancient feast of Samhein (pronounced Sa-wain) in the British Isles. The Druids celebrated this feast as a new year with bonfires, guising, and divination, supposedly. After Christianity came, Samhain was also abandoned and the All Saints' Day was set up on the first of November, coinciding with the Pagan feast. Later, it was joined by All Souls' Day where it was to remember the departed who were in Purgatory. To balance this came All Hallows' Eve, which is roughly translated as "All Holy Eve", and the slurring of it lead to the word Hallowe'en. The Christian celebration of All Hallows' Eve included the baking of soul cakes for the All Hallowtide and making of lanterns in turnips to ward off spirits, but the celebration was also suppressed by the Puritans. Gradually, it made its way to America where guising became putting on costumes. Trick o' treating arose from the tradition of begging on this particular day (some of which was connected to Caroling in Christmas) which gave the threat of vandalism if nothing was given or the treats were unsatisfying (Charlie Brown could have put those rocks to use). In America, it use to be common for vandalism to happen on Halloween night until it was decided to appease the children with sweets (from lollipops to candy apples). There was also the fascination with ghosts that arose from the All Saints' and All Souls' days that became ghouls, the more spacious pumpkins replaced turnips as a Jack o' lantern, the bobbing for apples done in parties (coinciding with the apple harvest), and telling of ghost stories. Here too was the more familiar celebration a product of recent times.
    So that is the general history of Hallowe'en and Christmas, two holidays with a mixture of Pagan and Christian elements from the old world, brought to the new, and realized in the 19th Century, and both have become commercialized. You can walk into stores at this time of the year and see their decorations out already and in more times than not you'll see Hallowe'en cards that feature white ghosts, orange pumpkins, green skin witches, and black cats, along with Hallowe'en themed candy. Costume stores also sell costumes that have a devilish side to it, though many targeted for adults are a little more erotic than macabre. The same with Christmas. If you took ten types of decorations, only one of them would feature Jesus, the Nativity setting, or anything Biblical basis while the rest are white snowmen (like Frosty), Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, a giant present, and so on. If there was one decoration that one could find now is anything related the film The Nightmare Before Christmas. For example, I recently went to a Hallowe'en themed store (since I don't put stock in the commercial side of Halloween, I won't dignify this store by saying its name; especially since someone could use this a product placement for them) and saw an animatronic Skeleton Jack who says phrases from the movie. Standing in a store with ghoulish animatrons and set ups that Dante, Poe, and Lovecraft, possibly Giger, could have imagined, it would be funny to see this tall skeleton wish you a Merry Christmas. But that leads me to the movie its self and to show how this movie is a good example of why one shouldn't yoke an ox with an ass.

    The movie is Tim Burton's take on the animated shows that were Holiday themed and aired on television as he was growing up, like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and Here Comes Peter Cottontail. All are alike in how they bring up a secular (except for The Little Drummer Boy) world in the holiday themed movie that is easily seen as a commercial for the candy and card companies. Yet, Burton apparently decided to make a little story that served as the basis for the movie after seeing Christmas decorations replace Hallowe'en ones in a store, plus the story How the Grinch Stole Christmas. So, he crafted a simple story of a skeleton named Jack who decided, one day, to bring Christmas to Hallowe'en by taking it over. What happens next is he has Santa Claus replaced by himself and makes his own sleigh and reindeer, and goes out to deliver presents, only to have it all blow up in his face. Santa comes to Jack and lets him know of his mistake and fixes everything up and everyone is back in his proper place. The movie, of course, expands on this.
    First, the movie opens by bringing the viewer into a forest with a couple of trees. A narrator then claims the story takes places in a world with holiday themed countries, all of which are accessible through their themed doors. Of course, you see the familiar images of them that are often presented in cards: Valentine's has the shape of a heart, St. Patricks a shamrock, Easter an egg, Thanksgiving a turkey, and Christmas a Christmas tree. Then we see that Hallowe'en is represented by a Jack o'lantern (not the original turnip made but the American one with the pumpkin). One thing to note is despite showing holidays Americans are familiar with and using the American fruit that lanterns are carved from, we don't see a representation of Independence Day among the trees, or Mother's Day, Father's Day, or even Mardi Gras. All of these are just as commercialized as Hallowe'en and Christmas, but thankfully they kept Thanksgiving in the frame.
   The idea of a land of Holiday themed countries sounds good, but it is never really explored. Not only that, the narrator says it took place long ago, but the film's climax has modern day cities. Yet, I can't figure out an excuse for that while having what looks like a quaint American town set up in the House of Hades. This last is Hallowe'en Town, a ghoulish, simple American town where ghosts and goblins live, the cemetery is the main feature, and trees are all dead. Most frequently, the town is shown at night, with a fog and a full moon, to add another Gothic element to the mix. Christmas Town is shown as the foil. It's presented as a winter wonderland, not too different from those decorations you might see in the stores, but downsized. Apparently, both towns live for their respected holidays as the movie opens with the denizens of Hallowe'en singing about All Hallows' Eve in the accurately titled song "This Is Hallowe'en". After the number, they declare it over and all praise Jack for orchestrating what he calls their "most horrible yet". Next, he goes to Christmas and sees that already are the elves making toys for Santa as the count down to Christmas Eve begins.
    One thing I can't really believe in the opening narration is it is said the film takes place long ago in this Holiday World, yet when we see Jack's Christmas Eve flight we are suddenly in Modern America. That I can't think of any explanation that would work for everyone. 

   A couple of things are hard to digest in rewatches as a Catholic. For example, the movie is incredibly secular. Jack never comes upon a Creche while in Christmas Town, and the reason why it's called Christmas Town is never brought up. Nor is there anything of a religion in Hallowe'en or mention of soul cakes. At the same time, we have a cemetery in Hallowe'en Town with some tombstones being crosses, but no chapel next to it. There's not even a church there (and I'll add also that there doesn't seem to be anything related to Druidism or Wicca there either). Jack swears "by God" twice in one song, but that is the only time we hear of God. When Jack sings his lament, there is a line that makes no sense. It goes "I'm a master of fright, I'm a demon of light"[2] This bothers me lately as demons are not really associated with the light, but darkness. I know in Ancient Greece the demon had a different connotation, but the demon is largely seen as a harmful spirit that often bothers people. Even the word demon comes from Greek, Daimon, to mean "divide", which matches well to the statement "fighting our inner demons" as they divide us from goodness. They can be seen in allegories where demons take shape in addictions, in lust, in anger, and in mental defects. The lyric in the song, "Jack's Lament", changes this and implies he is a eudaimon, which means "good demon", a term that doesn't make sense to a Christian perspective. It's a Catch-22 that has come up: if an angel rebels against God it is a fallen angel (which Christianity also claims demons to be fallen angels), yet if a demon parted from the Devil and repented it's not really a demon.
    Jack's title as Pumpkin King, a self-proclaimed "demon of light", makes the character come off as Lucifer, yet he is meant be Everyman in a moral play. While he likes the fact that he can scare people away (hey, he's a walking, talking skeleton of a man, after all) he tires of the way things remain. His lament expresses this as he sees the same Hallowe'en doing the same old thing. So he walks out of the town on Hallowe'en Night and goes searching for something new. The next morning, he finds the forest with the trees and of all the doors to choose from, he picked Christmas. Jack is then transported to Christmas Town for his number "What's This?", which is about the least ghoulish song in the movie. In it, Jack sees all the traditions associated with Christmas, but like I said he doesn't come upon a Creche (Might have lead to a case of, "what's this? A woman near a manger / What's this? a sleeping baby is in there!" and noting the Three Kings and Shepherds, plus the Angel and a Star, then wonders why it's filling him with warm feelings). No, Jack only sees the town, the animals, the children, the trees, and the snow (he even takes a bite of a snow ball that almost resembles a marshmallow). He also believes that Santa Claus, calling him "Sandy Claws" like some children would, is the ruler of Christmas Town. So, like an explorer who went to a different country, he comes back with souvenirs and shows them to his friends, only none seem to understand in his eyes. Neither does he, for he begins to try to find a rational explanation for Christmas to the people whose sole purpose is to be frightful. Eventually, Jack abandons that and thinks that it should all be shared and that is when he gets a new idea.
   So, the plot is that Jack is bring Christmas to Hallowe'en, or rather bring Hallowe'en to Christmas, however way you see it. His way of doing that is by taking it over in what could be seen as an adult as a coup de'tat. But the denizens of Hallowe'en hop aboard with it. During "Making Christmas" a group of vampires make a duck toy, a mad scientist brings up undead reindeer, and Sally, a ragdoll girl with a crush on Jack, makes him his suit. Sally has her own subplot that even the guy in Hollywood's War on God would have plenty to say about. She was created by a wheel chair bound scientist who exhibits a Frankenstein complex, complete with Igor, and comes off as overbearing. However, Sally doesn't simply want to be a "dutiful daughter" of his and tries to go out frequently and he doesn't want to. After the opening number, it's revealed she slipped deadly nightshade into his drink and ran off. She does it again to see the town meeting, and he grounds her upon recovery (personally, I don't know how it is he tolerates her or why he needs her when he has Igor). Eventually, she sneaks out the window and falls down, a la Lucifer from Heaven, and the Doctor forgets all about her as he makes a new creation. As opposed to winding up in her own Hell, Sally gains paradise in her rebellion by becoming the voice of reason in Jack's take over of Christmas and ultimately heroic (sort of). She becomes the voice of reason after seeing a vision of destruction. However, Jack doesn't heed her and has the trio of kids, the Boogie Boys (one of them is girl, though), kidnap Santa. The last part I always find amazing as Santa has a song that says "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake / He knows if you've been bad or good..."[3] which suggests him to be omnipresent (something I discussed in "St. Nick vs Santa Claus"), and yet he didn't know the Boogie Boys were coming. Wouldn't their names already be on the naughty list and Santa be waiting for them? (Speaking of names, they are named Lock, Shock, and Barrel, a parody of the phrase "lock, stock, and barrel"). At least, this instance brings him down to that of a man. Even Jack gets it when he discovers Santa doesn't have claws like he thought he did. Jack then takes over his holiday duties as gift giver and goes out on his sleigh ride (plus Zero, when the fog is thick enough to keep Jack from flying, like with Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer). Of course, Jack's gift giving results in chaos and the military mobilizes. Finally, Jack gets shot out of the sky and he finally learns his lesson that Christmas and Hallowe'en don't mix.
   There comes a point in How the Grinch Stole Christmas where the Whos in Whoville find everything taken as the Grinch predicted, yet they stand out in the town square and sing joyfully anyway. This tells the Grinch that despite what he had done Christmas still came and realizes "maybe Christmas...doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more."[4] We don't get that in A Nightmare Before Christmas. When Jack is shot down, Hallowe'en Town goes into mourning for their fallen king while in Christmas, Santa's absence leads to the authorities to cancel Christmas to the shock and grief of all. Even Jack hears it and repents of his ruining of the holiday. "Poor Jack" has him starting with this and saying he didn't intend it to happen this way, almost as if Tim Burton was speaking through him on how his works were intended to entertain and critics have made it something it wasn't. He then decides he knows who he really is and what he was meant for.
     Of course, the movie deviates from Burton's source material from this point. The Boogie Boys are heard plotting to kidnap Santa by the Boogie Man, known as Oogie Boogie. Santa is brought to Oogie Boogie who is gloats over him in his "Boogie Song". To me, Oogie Boogie was created to give the movie a villain, though not very active one, considering how he doesn't show up until half way into the movie, and with no formal introduction. He falls under the category of a trope, that is not in the TV trope website, I'd like to call Villain in a Coffin, or Vampire Villain for short. This type of villain is usually an exceptionally powerful character, practically able to destroy the world if he wanted to. Yet, this power has weakened his body greatly and is killing him, so he has to isolate himself in a chamber to prevent his demise, leaving minions and underlings to do his evil deeds. Oogie Boogie falls under this in many strokes: he spends his screen time under the house of the Boogie Boys, as though he were Satan in Hell (in Dante sense, the Boogie Boys are the three beasts the poet comes across in Inferno) and while being terrifying, he is fragile. He never fights Jack directly, mostly just avoiding him when they meet, and all it takes is Jack pulling a seam (revealing him to be nothing but a sand bag containing bugs) and he falls apart, literally. Yet, in his time, he threatens Santa with death, though it is delayed like a standard Bond villain would have it. Sally rescues him with her trick of coming apart and coming back together, but it wears off fast and she's captured. With her hands and leg off, she's vulnerable and this is something they were wise to keep from the movie. So, it's Jack who comes to the rescue to set things right. The rescue of Santa, and Sally, was added obviously to add more tension to the movie. At least, Santa is permitted to squash the remaining bug in the name of Christmas. However, I still wonder why the Boogie Boys are not given any punishments for their actions? For the most part, they are practically let off the hook and they never get a lump of coal.
     Once everyone, and everything, is back in its proper place, there doesn't seem to be any ill will. Santa flies over Hallowe'en Town and gives them the gift of snowfall while Jack has gotten holiday usurpation out of his system. There is a nice moment in this kind of peace offering where Santa and Jack exchange their holiday greetings, showing Hallowe'en and Christmas have mended all bridges and they can be good friends while staying in their places. Of course, this moral is somewhat out the window with the snowfall in Hallowe'en Town and the denizens singing a reprise of "What's This?" while doing hockey and snow ball fights. Jack even finds Sally in the snow covered cemetery and reveals his feelings for her (despite the lack of any build up to it) which closes the film with the implication that Peace, Love, and Joy have a spot in Hallowe'en.

   For the most part, there is little to no mention of the meaning of holidays. The prologue claims they come from a magical world with trees that have doors. The secular nature prevents someone from being like Linus and recite a passage from scripture when Jack wonders on Christmas. He laments on how no one in town understand it, yet he can't seem to get the meaning of it either. A few times, he seems to want to bring it up only to drop it for entertainment. The same with Hallowe'en where none of the town's denizens mention a founder or why they are what they are. Instead, it's a town where people talk of scaring everyone and everything, just like in Monsters Inc where the characters live to scare people. Even with the Disney and Touchstone logo, The Nightmare Before Christmas is still a commercial for card companies and candy companies. It wasn't really all that great when it first came out, but it has gained a cult following when it was aired on ABC Family, now called Freeform, along with another Halloween classic, Hocus Pocus. Both movies were about someone seeking out a meaning in holidays, which makes it ironic that the said television channel is using them as Hallowe'en themed commercials (more so with Nightmare as it is also considered a Christmas movie). Even for that, there are few good merits for the film to make it a classic that it is.
    The movie does contain some artistic expressions in the scenes, especially in terms of color. Black, gray, red, and orange are common in Hallowe'en Town, mostly to denote the deathly looks of the town with a touch of Fall. Christmas Town is given white and blue for the winter, with tradition green and red, along with silver and gold. Both towns are shown frequently at night, as Hallowe'en night is the time for trick'o treating and Christmas is just after the Winter Solstice. The ghouls of Hallowe'en and the deathly atmosphere give it a feel of a ghost town in a literal sense. This in contrast to the elf inhabited Christmas Town, largely to show a contrast between life and death. As to the towns, Hallowe'en is filled with German expressionism while Christmas can be seen as being like Dr. Seuss.
    The music is another thing that has lasted long. The opening number, "This is Hallowe'en", is memorable, though the flaw I find in it is it introduces to us characters by name who have almost nothing to do with the plot. The One Hiding Under Your Stairs gets a cameo, but we don't see The One Hiding Under Your Bed in body while the Clown With the Tear-Away Face is little more than an extra. Some who actually do things are not mentioned by name, such as the vampires, the werewolf, the harlequin demon, the glob man, and the witches. The Shadow of the Moon resembles Oogie Boogie, but nothing is used to explain that in the film. I will say one of the characters is made as a joke: the Mayor. The Mayor has a happy face with a manly voice for the most part, but it turns to a gloomy and depressed one with a whiny voice when the mood strikes him, a play on the phrase "two faced" (in fact, it goes on the idea of politicians being two faced). Jack has not one but four solo numbers in the movie. "Jack's Lament" and "Poor Jack" are effectively soliloquies as they permit the audience to hear Jack's thoughts in each case (the first of them establishes his character). "What's This?" and "What Does It Mean?" are his way of trying figure out Christmas. Sally also gets her number, "Sally's Song" where she speaks of not only her feelings but also her concern for Jack, having seen the vision of Christmas ending in disaster. Then the Boogie Boys sing "Kidnap the Sandy Claws", while Oogie Boogie sing "The Boogie Song", both of which fall into the category of Disney villain songs, though not included in some lists. One thing interesting is the song "Making Christmas", which is done to the tune of "Dies Irae". "Dies Irae" was a Gregorian chant, done mostly as a requiem in funerals. The title is Latin for "Day of Judgement" and it has been translated by many Classical composers, such as Berlioz in his Symphonie Fantastique and Verdi. In Danny Elfman, it becomes "Making Christmas", an irony that a Christmas song would be sung to a chant done in funerals (it'd be funnier if someone actually played it in a wedding as opposed to the "Ave Maria" or "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"). Then again, who is to say this is a first. I mean, have you ever heard of "Happy X-Mass", "I Believe in Father Christmas", or "Christmas At Ground Zero"? Hardly jolly enough songs and yet they are considered Christmas songs.
    If there is one good thing to close off, it's that Tim Burton has not given this movie any sequels, which is a good enough defiance to commercializing of holidays.


For additional information on Hallowe'en and Christmas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas
http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween
http://www.history.com/topics/christmas/history-of-christmas
Notes.

1. Deuteronomy 2:10
2. "Jack's Lament" The Nightmare Before Christmas. Tim Burton. Danny Elfman. 1993.
3. "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town".  Coots and Gillespie. 1934.
4. Dr. Seuss. How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Random House. 1957.

Frankenstein: Who is the Monster and Who is the Man?

 

    How do you do, 

   To start the countdown to Allhallowtide (or, as the non-Catholic readers would know it as, Hallowe'en -- which precedes All Saints' and All Souls' Day) I will reveal that every year, between this season and the Autumn Equinox, I commence to a binge reading of dark and spooky works. I don't have a particular order in this, unlike in most reading binges, which means I could start with just about anything. I could begin with Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hallow" and jump ahead to Poe's poems and stories, just as I would do with the American literature. Then it's fast fowarding to 1911 with Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. I sometimes add in Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray in the mix and Nathan Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables as they contain dark themes. Some years even include Goethe's Faust, mostly with the grim scenes in the first part's climax, along with H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds, and Stephen King's Carrie was included when I was in high school and college. Recently, I even included H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthuhlu" and Dante's Inferno (since it takes place in Hell, it does count as a kind of Medieval haunted house feel). At some point, I eventually reach Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus, one of my favorite novels in English literature. 

    Technically speaking, almost anything written or published after Christ rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven has some degree of darkness, including the Revelations of St. John that provides one of the darkest chapters in the Bible (the days when Satan will be at his peak power and the evil in the world will be at the worst, while the faithful face their greatest challenge ever, and finally the End of the World). In Western Literatures, you can mark the trend from the Fall of Rome (as Petrarch named the period as the Dark Ages) with darkness as a sign of chaos and light of God brought forth in the heroes, such as in the epic of Beowulf and the Norse sagas. It later transfers down into the Medieval period, especially in wake of the Black Death, and the foreboding theme of death echoes through many works. Shakespeare wasn't immune to this as evidenced by his three darkest plays: MacBeth, Hamlet, and King Lear. Somewhere in this evolution of story telling, the core of the Christian doctrine (being resurrection of Christ who will bring a resurrection of the dead in the Second Coming) has become perverted with stories of the dead walking among us, and with the undead coming forth, all of which cause chills in our spines and goosebumps on our skins. In short, European literatures have some fascination with death and darkness, which is still present today (think of Harry Potter's chief antagonist, Lord Vordemort, who's name means "Fly from Death", and is also the embodiment of Death itself). So, when it comes to the clash of life and death in the realm of light and darkness, a discussion of Mary Shelley's novel comes into being as it deals with those themes, while also taking on other themes. 

    Imagine, female readers out there, you and your husband are newlyweds going on a vacation in the Alps. Once there, you meet up with the famous man of letters, George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, or Lord Byron as most call him. He and Mister Polidori are vacationing near lake Geneva and you and your husband meet up with him. You have plans of using this retreat for nature hikes, boat rides, and some sports you know of in the meadow. However, upon arrival, the weather goes from pleasant and sunny to rainy and wintry. What the heck? you wonder. It's June, the start of summer, and it's freezing outside. Who turned off the summer? Welcome to Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death, as we in America call it. So, instead of doing all those things mentioned, you are stuck inside, keeping warm by the fire with glasses of sherry, and reading a few ghost stories of German origin translated into French. Then, Lord Byron decides to host a constant where everyone will come up with a ghost story that is original. You hear the men tell all sorts while you busy yourself with one. Then, one night, you dream of seeing "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together"[1] which is put into motion by incredible means, then seek out his creator who fled from the creation and try to reach out to him at the bed curtains. This is enough to wake you up and narrate the scene to the men. 

   If this story is about you, your name would be Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley, nee Godwin, named after the feminist writer of the late 18th Century, 19 years old and wife of the poet Percy Shelley (admit it, you saw the footnote and panned down to take a look). Mrs. Shelley dreamed up the scene that later became chapter five of the novel, Frankenstein. She evidently was encouraged by her husband to expand on the scene and it became a short, three part novel, finally published in 1818, which means it will turn two hundred years in 2018. Over the two centuries since it was first published, Shelley's break out book (or not since all of her later works didn't match the power of Frankenstein and were forgotten) has been translated into many languages, adapted to plays and movies. We all know of the 1931 movie starring Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's creation and the franchise that spawned forth of the robotic giant, with scars and bolts, walking toward you. There are also the lesser known Hammer films with Peter Cushing of Star Wars fame playing Doctor Frankenstein, and one had his fellow Star Wars costar, David Prowse, play his creation. 1994 saw Sir Kenneth Branagh team up with Robert De Niro in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Then there are the loose adaptations like Young Frankenstein (a spoof on the Karloff movies, mostly), Rocky Horror Show, and Frankenweenie (in which a kid resurrects his dog). More recently, American author, Dean Koontz, made a re-imagining of Frankenstein and even titled it that way. First time readers of Shelley's novel may or may not be familiar with all these, but they would be in for a few surprises upon opening it up. 

   For starters, contrary to the Universal films, the setting doesn't happen in Transylvania. In the book, Victor Frankenstein states he is Gevenese, though born in Naples[2]. He creates his "monster" not in Geneva, either, but in the University of Ingolstadt, in Bavaria (today part of Germany). The setting switches between Switzerland and Germany a couple of times, with one visit to the British Isles, before climaxing in the White Sea. Another thing to surprise the reader is in the name. Frankenstein is not the name of the Creature, despite the popular branding of him. Frankenstein is the name of his creator. The book offers no name to him, but he does say to Frankenstein "I ought to be thy Adam"[3], a reference to the first man, created in the image of God, yet is called "Devil" by his creator which made him reference his status as a fallen angel[4]. Third, Shelley offers no description of how the monster was brought to life. She doesn't even give us a clue to how he was fashioned together. It's basically we see the sausage but never see how its made, if we could use that phrase. And there is a fourth surprise: the hunchback assistant Igor who populates the image of a mad scientist who is compared to Frankenstein does not exist in the book. 

  In fact, Frankenstein hardly resembles the mad scientist sort. He is often called Doctor Frankenstein, yet he is still a student in Ingolstadt when he made his creation. That is basically like calling Howard in The Big Bang Theory as Doctor Wolowitz, despite the fact that he is an engineer with a masters. Frankenstein did go into the university to study chemistry (or alchemy, as it was called), but later switched to poetry. The thing of him creating his creation is more about wanting to make another break through in science: to conquer death. That basically leads us to the subtitle: "The Modern Prometheus." 

   First, get rid of the movie you saw back in 2012. Prometheus was a titan in Greek Mythology who created Man out of clay. He then stole fire from the gods as humans were less likely to survive than animals who had the best gifts around. For that, Zeus had him chained to a mountain in the Caucasians and his liver would be pecked by ravens. Prometheus had also taught humans to offer poor quality sacrifices to Zeus and keep the meats for themselves, which angered the god farther. Prometheus stayed there until Heracles, son of Zeus, came along and freed him. Since Antiquity, the legend of Prometheus is more than the Greek retelling of the Discovery of Fire. A being dares to take what belonged to heaven, even with the intention of aiding the lowly in the process, which is still an act of theft, and is thus cast down and given a harsh punishment. For most of the history of Europe, the thought stayed on as it seemed an example of "Thou shalt not steal", until the Romantic period (of which the Shelleys and Lord Byron are a part of) came along and re-translated the legend to be anti-authoritarian. The fire that the gods hold is suddenly the key to the lowly becoming equal to the high, yet the people above don't want it shared and thus the hero takes it away and upsets the delicate balance. Two generations later, German philosopher, Frederic Nietzsche, made Prometheus a tragic figure in rebellion against the universe, yet is defeated and brought down. Of course, the Romantics understood the danger to this deed and showed it. A generation prior, William Blake had Bromion take Oothoon from Theotorman in Visions of the Daughters of Albion and he winds up chained with her and suffer remorse for his actions[5]. In the same instance, Mary Shelley has Victor Frankenstein take the ability to create life from God through science and winds up doing that cliched phrase "created a monster". 

    One thing with Frankenstein is also seen in the name: Victor. It is an obvious parody of victor, as in winner, but it leans more toward the vicar, a clergyman. Take also the surname being of German origin, meaning "Stone of the Franks", than you basically get the name that means "Vicar, Stone of the Franks". Before he creates his creation, Frankenstein starts out as the doted child of a loving couple. He has two brothers named Ernest and William, a cousin named Elizabeth, to whom he falls in love with, plus his best friend, Henry Clerval. These are English names, as Shelley was writing to English readers, so we can't doubt Elizabeth actually was christened Isabella while Henry was Henri or Heinrich, and Ernest was Ernst. Frankenstein spends many days of his childhood reading, which leads to Shelley making discourses on philosophical works that happen in the narrative (if they don't interest you, you can skim them over, though I don't really recommend it). One can see why Stephen King compared it to "a college dormitory bull session"[6] when reading it over. After reading and studying, he goes to Ingolstadt for higher learning, which makes him run into two professors, Messers. Krempe and Waldman, who stand in for the faculty of the institution (my interpretation of it, as I don't think they ever existed). Waldman is the one who takes Frankenstein on to his path of infamy, especially with this speech: 

"The ancient teachers of this science," he said, "promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little;...But these philosophers...have indeed performed miracles."[7]

   The speech is very biased against Ancient sciences, especially against the Greeks who coined the word. We know now that the ancients were able to invent things to benefit man, charted the universe, constructed structures, and created ways of solving equations. What the modern scientist does is merely follow in their footsteps, sometimes standing on the shoulders of genius. What made the men Waldman spoke of fascinating was how they were able to demystify the world after centuries of seeing it one way. They did prove that the sun and the earth weren't supported by giants, but by gravity (as well as the earth going around the sun, instead of the other way around), that lightning is electricity and an atmospheric discharge, and so on. It would seem that science has taken the magic out of the world, becoming the light to replace darkness, and expose the ghosts as nothing but illusions. I shouldn't have to add that Ingolstadt is also the place where the Illuminati was formed, met for a while, and then was disbanded, roughly in the time frame of the book's story, and its name means "light." 

    This light now entices Frankenstein take the next step, going along with what Dr. Ian Malcolm is saying in Jurassic Park (which shares many themes with Frankenstein). Instead of making a quote and placing a footnote, why not just watch this clip and listen for yourself. But, after that and taking some knowledge of mixing chemicals to make the elixir of life, Frankenstein goes out finds pieces of a human corpse and makes something out of them while the year flies away. This is not coming up with getting a baby to live outside of its mother's womb or to keep the body of a person gone vegetable kicking; he is using parts and parcels of people who lived their lives and were selected to die. Yet, he uses those pieces to bring together a reanimated man. Then, he brings it to life and realizes too late he made a mistake. In this period where men were rationally explaining away the existence of demons, imps, witches, and ghouls, all of a sudden, we got a demon that lives and breathes like any mortal creature. 

    The Creature is a very interesting character to walk the pages of English literature. He is a stark contrast to Boris Karloff's interpretation. He is big, but he is not a robot or a zombie (if anything, he could be likened to the Revenent, an undead creature that dies but is brought back to life). He evokes the image of the Egyptian god Osiris, who was killed and mutilated, but put back together and resurrected. Yet, where Osiris remains the same when he comes back, the Creature here begins as a newborn lamb. 

    While we may call him Frankenstein, that is not really his name. In the book, he is constantly referred to as Demon, Wretch, and, one time, Devil. Monster is the common name used, though he hardly seems like it. Creature is the working name, though it does dehumanize him somewhat. Another is Creation, which is also dehumanizing. The only logic to naming him Frankenstein is largely to make a kind of paternity between him and his creator, though by that logic Adam would have been called Adam, Son of God, in scripture and we'd all be bearing the title "Son / Daughter of God" in our names. So, basically, the Creature has no name, mostly as Frankenstein never thought to give him one and just referred to him by degrading terms. 

    The Creature leaves Ingolstadt and resides in the country, allowing for the Pasterol setting so familiar in Romantic arts to appear in the novel. He sees nature at work and learns how to support himself as no one is around to help him. During his life, he figures out how to make fire and how to acquire food, becoming a strict vegetarian who lives on nuts and berries. One day, he comes upon a cottage and watches a family consisting of an old man and his children, named the De Laceys. One day, they are joined by an Arabian woman named Safie, who the youth, Felix, is attached to. Through this setting, the Creature learns how to talk and read, eventually reading great works of literature in the process. He also learns of Man and the good and the bad of the human race. Finally, he learns of his creation and how even his own creator hates him.
   If there is one thing modern readers may find not so PC in this section is the constant appearance of discrimination. The Creature comes off as an analog to the era being that Shelley wrote at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, which were preceded by the French Revolution, which was in turn foreshadowed by the Age of Enlightenment, as though the Revolution and its ideals were the monster made by the thinking of Voltaire and Franklin. As Shelley was writing, Britain was in the Industrial Revolution which was sweeping Europe also, radically changing life. Political movements to dominate the century had their beginnings at this time like feminism and liberalism, both of which have created their own monsters. Some things in the novel can seem dated, especially the knowledge the Creature obtains. The history he learns is slanted toward the Europeans and the subplot of Felix and Safie presents two types of Muslim characters: the exotic Arab and the treacherous Turk. These do have some purpose to 19th century readers as the Ottoman Empire was still a power at the start while Arabia had not had many visitors from Europe since the Crusades. The exotic Arab is in Safie whose beauty attracts a young Frenchman named Felix De Lacey. The treacherous Turk is her father who promises her to Felix, only to go back on it after being freed from justice at the ruining of his potential in law's family. The portrayal might seem slanderous to Muslim readers, but it serves a purpose to let the Creature see Man's dark side, which gives him one in turn. The Creature also learns of poverty and classism while near the cottage, which enables Shelley to make a commentary on society itself.
    So, the Creature holds up a mirror for the reader, regardless of his skin color or religious beliefs, his political stance or his orientation, and asks the reader look at oneself and examine those stances, as opposed to picking something for a stance. He could say how he is excluded because he is one of his kind and how the actions of people have made him this way, pointing it out in every form. Imagine how the Creature might react to our current society, especially having something to say about recent tragedies and our leaders.
   When the Creature tries to communicate with the cottagers, it starts out with some awkwardness as he never got a chance to socialize, and even the Blind Man's children scorn him. He seeks out Frankenstein and kills William during his tenure, thus making in a matter of chapters the corruption of a soul that happens without will. The Creature wasn't born to be wicked, but circumstances made him that way. He only wanted companionship, but because of his ugliness he gets turned away at all turns and even harmed when he does one good thing (can you imagine Superman getting shot at for rescuing Lois? by one of her friends?). But, worst of all, to the Creature's mind, is that his own creator has spurned him and now he can offer nothing but torment to Frankenstein. So, after reading the book, it's hard to not watch the speech in Young Frankenstein that the Creature gives to keep the mob from killing Frederick, or that Apple commercial where the Creature attempts to sing "Home For the Holidays" to a crowd of tree gawkers, without getting misty in the eye, for in both examples he gets that warm welcome he had long sought out. Even that Hugh Jackman movie, Van Helsing, has the Creature becoming heroic. 

     This is not what happens in the book, though. The Creature requests a companion of Frankenstein with the promise that he would leave Europe for South America and they would be content. However, Frankenstein goes back on his promise and destroys the work, just as Safie's father went back on his promise to Felix. The Creature then declares war by murdering Henry and later Elizabeth, in his promise "I shall be with you on your wedding day". You can just imagine that in this day and age, such a threat would be taken serious and you would think a restraining order or something would help. Of course, how would you explain to the judge that you want a restraining order to someone who was just a year ago a corpse that you brought back to life. You might get dismissed from the court room as a loon. This is also why Frankenstein held his silence when William was murdered and the nanny, Justine, was punished. An innocent woman is executed for the crimes by another, in a portrayal of the justice system (note the pun, Justine and justice) that comes across as Anti-Catholic at times -- she is threatened into confessing the murder by the confessor and the confession is a lie.

     Eventually, Frankenstein is left with only Ernest alive and he chases the Creature into Russia and then up north. Shelley opens and closes the book with Captain Robert Walton and his expedition in the North Pole, which follows closely the plot of The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner (even with the mention of the Albatross). Just like in the movie, Titanic (1997), the book ended scenes feature a man searching for something (Walton's case is adventure to the unknown as shown with the North Pole) while probing the Arctic with a ship manned by Russians. Then he meets a character who narrates the story, thus making it a story within a story, plus another through the Creature's narrative. Frankenstein dies of hypothermia and the Creature repents of his deeds. He waxes poetic of his deeds to Walton and vows to die up in the North Pole, thus ending the book as a downer. Both Frankenstein and his Creature die cut off from humanity, for the former matches to Prometheus. 

    Frankenstein; Or the Modern Prometheus is not a long book. It's 196 pages long (fifteen of which are devoted to the two introductions) split across three parts and twenty four chapters. That doesn't sound like much, you might think, but why did it take two years for Mary Shelley to publish all that? The publishing process was a little different then. It was published in a serial form, originally. As to the style, if you took out all of the philosophical digressions and angst passages, plus shrink the backstory of Frankenstein down some, the book would be vastly shorter, barely passing the 100 page marker. The dialogue is poetic sounding with the Creature's initial speech to Frankenstein sounding like that of a prayer (he uses Thee and Thy when addressing him the way a priest does to God). I will say Shelley is able to make a representation of men in the book better than she does with her fellow women, which seems surprising. Elizabeth and Justine, plus Caroline Frankenstein, are the main women in the book whose roles are fleeting and tragic as they die off one by one. Agatha and Safie are brought up in the Creature's narrative as either the dutiful daughter or the damsel. At the same time, the men are little more than symbols: the professors being the Pan like tempters, Henry is the boyhood friend, and so on. The only really fleshed out characters are Victor Frankenstein, his Creation, and Captain Walton, who each seek something. Walton and the Creature are seeking a companion and Walton shares Frankenstein's quest for glory. It should be pointed out the truly fleshed out characters are the ones narrating the book.
    Looking over the book, Mary Shelley is able to create scenes of desolation and horror, especially once the Creature has been created. The first four chapters are spent on setting up Frankenstein and his ambition to conquer death. Chapter four mentions him raiding charnel houses, slaughter houses, and dissecting rooms[8] just to get the pieces of the body, as opposed to simply unearthing a dead man and using the body for his experiment. Then comes chapter five, from which point things get dark, including the pivot-able scene of the Creature coming to life. The moment is a parody of the Creation of Adam, even making an inverse where the Creation holds out the hand to the Creator. When the Creature narrates his tale, we seen pastoral scenes of nature, that makes one thing of paintings. Even Frankenstein's ascent of Mont Blanc is like the painting of the man on the mountain. It gets dreary afterward, finally climaxing with Elizabeth's murder that is done to the style of the painting "Nightmare." Thus the light and dark of the Romantic period is exploited with artistic imagery in the text.

   When looking about the story, one common image pops up in the descriptions: ice. Remember, Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein in the summer of 1816, which was the Year Without a Summer. Through out the book, you see this image of snow and ice that often makes the book feel cold: the book opens and closes in the North Pole, with Walton's ship trapped by ice, the Creature spends his early days in the cold, Frankenstein climbs Mont Blanc and scales its glaciers, and the Creature dies alone in a frozen waste land. It also matches to Dante's Inferno where, instead of the usual fire and brimestone you get in a Sunday sermon, Hell is shown as a giant, dark, eternal freezer with a lake of ice holding the worst of sinners. Frost brought that up in his "Fire and Ice" by stating:

If it had to perish twice, I think I know enough hate, / to say for destruction ice is also great / and would suffice.[9]

    Light and darkness. Fire and ice. Contrasts of the matter are present in stories, with European literature consisting of darkness frequently. The darkness of death is present in Frankenstein where Victor Frankenstein sees it as the ultimate enemy to beat. The irony was his action of creating life to beat death resulted in more death as the Creature does murder, either deliberately or inadvertently. Of course, it is Frankenstein whose soul bleeds from this as it was him who set the events into motion. The Creature never sought to murder people, not at first. All he wanted was companionship. However, coming upon a dark world as this where people are repelled by ugliness (even today, where good looking guys could get away with certain actions and racial profiling is rampant in major cities) makes it harder and it breaks his heart. So, he becomes a monster. At the same time, could he really be a monster? Or as Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame had us decide: "who is the monster and who is the man?"[10]
     One thing to add is the book Frankenstein turns 200 years old next year. 


1: Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein. 1818 Author's Introduction (1831). pg. x-xi.
2: Shelley. pg. 33
3: Shelley. pg. 95.
4: Ibid.
5: Blake, William, Visions of the Daughters of Albion. 1793.
6: King, Stephen. Introduction to Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Signet Classic. 1978. pg. vii.
7: Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein. pg. 47.
8: Shelley. pg. 53.
9: Frost, Robert. "Fire and Ice."
10: "The Bells of Notre Dame", Alan Menkin. 1996.