Finding Frankenstein

Just a few days ago, I wandered into a class in Fogg for a Head of School “drive by,” where English department chair Meg Martinson was introducing Frankenstein to her students. Many months ago, I remember her mentioning to me at a lunch table how much she loved the book; she lit up as I walked in the door and invited me to grab a seat in the discussion. She told me that “I could not have chosen a better moment” for a visit. As a former English teacher myself, the discussion reminded me of how many gaps I have in my own reading: this was yet another classic novel I had yet to tackle. I had always assumed it would be dense and predictable somehow.

Clearly Meg’s job in this particular class was to try to ground the students, as they had been assigned the first few pages in the book the night before. For those of you that have actually read it, you know that Mary Shelley chooses to structure the tale with a complex layering of narration – a female author employs a male narrator, who is writing to his sister, while retelling the story of his new friend Victor Frankenstein – who the narrator has met during an epic adventure to the Arctic. Clearly some sophisticated story telling choices have been made here that go far beyond “once upon a time.”

I was struck by the remarkable skill involved in distillation – in making this complexity exciting to the students rather than a source of confusion or opacity. Once she had grounded the kids on the logistics of the structure, great questions began to fly: Is this thing really a monster? Why do people always represent Frankenstein as a green freak rather than an enormous man? Why does Victor seem to be in such a state of panic?

For my part, I found myself drifting towards my own internal dialogue: It is about time you get back to reading some real literature…This book doesn’t seem so daunting after all…This is what you miss about being an English teacher… Happily I can report as of this writing I am almost halfway through Frankenstein. I can say with confidence that I had unknowingly been given a gift in that particular class. While I wish I had the pleasure of discussing my reactions to it with my friends every day in Fogg, I can tell you that I am completely enraptured by the story and won’t stop until I am through.  I am left reminded of just how lucky our students are to be in the presence of such skilled educators, whose enthusiasm and prowess can make the inaccessible accessible and the mythical shockingly relevant to our modern teenagers.