Loss of Innocence

We spend our partitioned lives, and a brevity of them, in AP Literature finding new ideas to talk about and expand upon. We look into the depths and far-reaching ends of these characters and analyze our different themes till there is no more to discuss about.

But what does that mean, in terms of our themes, for us?

As loss of innocence was my group's assigned theme, we strove to find the various places where our characters lost their naiveté or innocence. We established points where the monster lost its innocence in various places like the point of his creation, when he was shunned by an innocent family, and when he was shot for trying to save a drowning woman's life. We talked about Victor's innocence and how he loses it at the deaths of everyone in his life as well as his decision to abort his second.

But what about us? Where do we as readers lose our innocence?

A loss of innocence, by the common agreement in our fishbowls and online discussions, is when a character loses his or her naiveté. For example, a parent buys a child a pet goldfish and the child believes he and the fish will live happily ever after forever. He loses his innocence when the fish passes away and he realizes that both happiness and life have a definite end sometimes. Regardless, this is just a life lesson and he will pick up his life soon after, but the point is that he went through that hardship and it may stand to define him as a person.

Now that we've established that, where do we truly lose our innocence when we read the novel?

There are various small points where us readers lose our innocence and then there is one big point where we lose it as well. When Victor mocks his creation after it is created, we discussed about how we felt bad and didn't think it was right. But that all changed as soon as the monster kills an innocent human life. We lose innocence at the mere idea of the monster being a tabula rasa because it went against a fundamental human ideal, the preservation of life. When we feel bad for the monster's stories, yet mock it for blackmailing Victor, we go against our word and lose our innocence of opinion. These are all very minute instances of where us readers lose our innocence, but even this is a stretch.

The main point where we readers lose our innocence is when we find the monster, near the end of the book, weeping beside Victor's dead body. It's primary mission was to blackmail, threaten, and kill victor, but it weeps at the death of its enemy? We lose our innocence the most here simply because we realize the monster is capable of feeling empathy for the death of its creator. Countless time it murdered people and it was not apparent to us whether or not the monster felt, but our emotions are crossed and we lose our innocence of judging. We were wrong about the monster caring for its creator regardless of their relationship, and it turned out to be very different from what we actually expected.

We judged a book by its very strange and limited cover.

--

Special K