The talk given by Gillen Wood took us back to a different time and place, one which produced the iconic novel Frankenstein. I was surprised to hear that this novel was written in a summer that was spent indoors because it was “the year without summer.” it is surprising to think that one sumer is all it took to write such a masterpiece. Mary Shelly really put her time to good use that summer, at only 18 she would end up changing literature forever.
I was so interested in what was mentioned in Wood’s talk that I decided to do more research into the novel, Frankenstein. As wood had said, this novel was written by Mary Shelly during the rainy summer of 1815. She and her lover had spent the summer in switzerland because of the Mt. Tombora eruption. This massive eruption effected so much of Europe by making the summer rainy, as if there was no summer at all. Crops failed, people starved, sickness was rampant, adn Mary Shelly was not able to enjoy the quintessential summer activities she normally would have. Shelly’s initial reason for writing a story was when a group was all at Lord Byrons villa one night, reading ghost stories translated from German to French. The group decided that a good way to pass the time would be to write ghost stories of their own. Shelly at first found it very difficult to come up with a good idea, it was a source of stress for her. One night she got an idea when they were talking about what life was. She decided to write a story about a corpse that came back to life. What was once a short story written to entertain later became an actual novel we still read today.
Thinking about all of this I wonder if something similar would ever happen now a days. If we were to not have a summer, everyone would just be inside on technology. We have endless means to entertain ourselves when weather is bad, I believe that what happen back in 1815 would never happen. This realization makes me sad because I wonder where most of our spontaneous creativity has gone. I often wonder if there are so many top[ics that have been covered in art, literature, film, photography, etc. that there is no longer much room for original ideas. When was there a last time that an idea was completely new, never been touched before. As a film minor I always wonder what will come next in the film industry? How hard is it to come up with and idea that hasn’t been executed on the screen. With every film that has already been created, is it getting harder and harder to be creative? and if so will a new medium have to be created in order to maintain interest in entertainment.
I guess that even today we are still using stories of corpses to entertain ourselves. TV shows such as the Walking Dead and izombie and movies like zombieland keep the Genre alive even 200 years later. I just wonder when this topic might be exhausted.