Characters

Liam McNally- Liam is the main character. He is very independent and loves to be alone. Liam is in essence a loner, he doesn't hang out with people outside of school, but he does know what is going on in the world around him. He as a a vast knowledge of the outdoors and has a love for animals, which is shown.

Sequoia- Sequoia is Liam's German Shepherd. In the story, Sequoia is Liam's best friend. Sequoia is a loyal, smart, friendly dog that goes with her instincts. She plays a big part in Liam's life and also in Abigail's future life too.

Abigail- Abigail is a girl that Liam went to school with. Abigail and Liam don't meet until the end of the story, and we don't know much about Abigail, but she plays a significant part in Liam's life by the end of the story.



*Liams sisters and parents are mentioned, but only briefly in the introduction.

Sympathy

In this story, I find myself sympathizing with the monster more than Victor. In the begin, Victor was excited to create a being from scratch. Once the monster actually came to life, Victors opinion changed very quickly. He was scared and didn't know what he actually had done. He abandoned the monster and let him go without a second thought. The monster was left alone to fend for himself and teach him how to live. In some of the middle chapters, it talks about the monster learning about surviving and fire. He sticks his hands in the fire because he thought it would be warm not burn him and he learns the hard way that he cannot do that. I also sympathize with the monster because Victor wants us to see him as an evil being that does nothing but kill and hurt people. He makes us believe that the monster has no feelings and doesn't understand us. That is not true. The monster has feelings, just like all living beings. He feels bad because no one wants to be friends with him because he is ugly. All he wants is to have someone like himself so he can be happy and have someone to love him too. "“I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel. Oh! My creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my request!” (Shelley. Chapter 17). Also, I feel bad for the monster because by the end of the book, he still never got someone to actually love him. Yes, he did kill Victors family, but he also spent all the years of his life feeling bad for what he did and being lonely because no one wanted to be around him. “But soon," he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, "I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.” (Shelley. Chapter 24) I feel bad for the monster the most because his life wouldn't have been so hard if Victor actually cared for him and taught him all the things he ended to know when he was first created. If Victor had actually tried to help the monster and he turned out how he did, I would sympathize with Victor, but he didn't. That is why I sympathize with the monster more than Victor.

Mont Blanc

In Mont Blanc, the connection between self and nature seems very evident. The way Shelley seems to feel in nature is quite similar to how I do. When you are alone in nature, you get lost in the sights around you. You pay attention to the little things that others would say are minor and unimportant. Also, when one gets lost in nature, you end up lost in yourself. You spend so much time taking everything in that it causes your mind to spin off in a thousand directions. You think about important things in like where you stand and how decisions you make effect your life. Nature and self connect very closely because when one can connect to nature they can truly connect to themselves and I feel like Shelley felt at one with nature when he wrote this poem.

First Impressions

The first impression that I got of the monster was that he was an abomination, nothing like Victor actual wanted. Victor also portrays him as an evil, blood lusting giant who kills in cold blood. But when we actually get to hear the monster tell his side of the story, I realized that he was just like a kid. Confused and unsure about his surroundings, and just getting used to everything. The monster has quite the thought process and learns very quickly. In reality, he isn't real a "monster",  it an understood creation which Victor doesn't want to face to realize that he is just like a human.

Percy Shelley

In Part 3 of the Mont Blanc poem, Shelley talks about a  lot of things philosophically and naturally. Shelley is awe stricken by the things he sees while looking at amount Blanc. He becomes so deeply lost in his mind, he starts asking questions about gods knowing the truth about life and death. Then when he gets out of his trance, he is actually taking in everything around him and paints a beautiful picture of this big beautiful, and terrible looking mountain. He has a lot of things going Through his mind while he observes and takes in everything around him. His thinking is very philosophical. Very much along the lines of if something happens and no one is there to see it, did it really happen? Lots of good thinking on Shelley's part.

William Blake

William Blake writes the poems from two different perspectives to show how opposing sides view things. Older people see things from a different point of view than younger people. Like kids in high school; if a freshman wrote a poem about how they feel about high school, it would be vastly different from a senior writing a poem about high school. The innocence shows that people with less experience more times know less about something, and people who have already lived through whatever the topic was have a better understanding and view of the topic. Blake wanted to show how each side would write about a topic.