Frankenstein, Volume Three, Chapter Seven

In which Victor vows vengeance, pursues to the perilous pole, is saved by the stranded sailors, and all are awfully angsty.



And that concludes Frankenstein! It took us a while, but we made it. I admit, this last bit especially is a bit of a slog (sorry it's so long, I really just couldn't make another all-Robert-Walton installment), with us returning to the framing story we don't really care about and everyone talking about how miserable they are. What really sort of gets me in this section (as you can probably tell from my interjection at one point) is how both Walton and the monster sort of lionize Victor, and bemoan his sad fall due to persecution from the creature. Yes, Victor had a tragic downfall, but it was of his own making. He's not the hero of this story. No one is, really, nor is anyone truly the villain (notice I never used the "iconic villain debut" tag in this book). And I'm not talking about "oh, his actions had terrible consequences that he couldn't possibly have foreseen," because he created a giant, sentient, intelligent creature and then just abandons it. How could something bad possibly come from that?

ANYWAY. This final cover comes from a 1934 edition published by Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, with cover and illustrations by Lynd Ward (1905-1985). Ward was a very influential artist, best known for his engraved wood illustrations, particularly in his series of "wordless novels" that strongly influenced the development of the graphic novel. He also illustrated hundreds of children's books, won the 1953 Caldecott Medal for his book The Biggest Bear, and of course illustrated a number of classics, such as Frankenstein here.

Man, look at that! I love the art deco / German expressionistic look of this. It's like Fritz Lang directed this book cover. Also, hee, monster butt. I really wish I could've used his illustrations in my posts, because they're just magnificent, really. Check out Victor and the monster on the glacier! The monster running among lightning trees! William's murder! Victor with his chemistry equipment! Hey, wait, that looks a lot... oh, Airmont Classics. You plagiarizing scamps. (UPDATE: I forgot to link to the main site, where you can see a whole bunch more of the illustrations from this edition! DISCLAIMER: The guy who compiled the site is an author on an apparent crusade to prove that not Mary but Percy Shelley wrote Frankenstein, a position I do not support.)

Just a couple of quick notes in this one, as most of the being miserable was fairly straightforward. At 6:36, Victor pursues the monster into Tartary and Russia, where Tartary was a large chunk of central and northern Asia that included Mongolia, Siberia, Turkestan, and Manchuria, among other regions. This is of course where the Tartars we met in "Sleepy Hollow" came from.

At 33:38, Walton's letter from September 12th recounts how the ice broke up on September 9th. Well, the text actually says "September 19th" there, which was presumably a typesetting error in the 1818 edition due to the printer assuming that it was supposed to be the date of the next letter and thus should have a later number. It was corrected in later printings, so I figured I'd just change it myself rather than leave it weird and confusing.

Last, 48:21 the monster talks about Felix driving him from his door "with contumely," which basically means "with insulting and humiliating treatment."

And that's a wrap! We're going to lighten things up a bit with our short story interlude, as well as our next book. Stay tuned!


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!

"Rikki-tikki-tavi," by Rudyard Kipling

In which a mongoose is found by a family, and defends them against the wicked cobras who live in their garden, and in which our narrator thinks you should just be grateful that the humans were the only ones with attempted British accents.



"Rikki-tikki-tavi" was originally published in 1894 in Kipling's The Jungle Book (which, yes, has more than just the Mowgli stories in it), and is now perhaps most familiar to people of recent generations through the 1975 animated version by Chuck Jones. The book, and thus this story was thoroughly illustrated by Rudyard Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Despite being a short story, Kipling the Elder illustrated it to nearly Denslowian proportions, so all of them are after the jump.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapters Eleven and Twelve

In which our heroes encounter the many forms of Oz, who hires them to whack the Wicked Witch of the West, and then one of the most iconic villains of American children's literature is introduced, encountered, and dispatched in the space of one chapter; and in which the film audience wonders how we can be done with the Wicked Witch if the book is only half over.



We did a full four chapters last time, so we make up for it this time by only doing two. They're extra-long chapters, though, so we've still got a full twenty-three Denslow illustrations to peruse.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapters Seven to Ten

In which a summary becomes necessary for those who've only seen the movie, as our heroes encounter chasms, Kalidahs, and rivers, as well as some familiar poppies with some unfamiliar field mice, and the Emerald City is finally reached.



Well, since we managed to squeeze in four chapters this time, we've got a whopping twenty-eight Denslow illustrations. Seriously, the illustrations are very nearly one per page.

Treasure Island, Chapters Thirty-Three and Thirty-Four

In which our heroes get away surprisingly easily, there is much hauling of gold, and the primary villain gets away with it; and in which our narrator swears that there was more of Long John in the book, but maybe he's just thinking about Tim Curry.



Only a few notes for these last two chapters, most importantly dealing with the monetary list Jim makes while sorting out the treasure. My own editions makes a note of "walking the plank," for those unaware of what that means in a pirate context, but oddly neither of the note "pig nuts," because I seriously thought Long John was being a little cruder than he actually was.

Two final N. C. Wyeth illustrations for these sections: first, we've got Jim in Ben Gunn's cave, sorting through the massive pile of coins and loading them into bags, alongside a stack of gold ingots:

11:35 -  "I was kept busy all day in the cave packing the minted money into bread-bags."

Second, we've got the neat endpapers to Wyeth's edition, showing the pirate band charging forth to find the treasure, armed with cutlasses, muskets, shovels, and pickaxes:

And that does now officially close the book on Treasure Island. The whole book is now gathered together on The Bookshelf. Stay tuned for another short story interlude before starting our next book, and thanks for listening!


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!

Treasure Island, Chapters Twenty-Four to Twenty-Six

In which Jim's dang fool plan mysteriously works, allowing him to commandeer the vessel, which he decides to run aground (no no, on purpose) with the assistance of the injured pirate Israel Hands, who is surprisingly not to be trusted.



Geez, the only thing in these chapters 1908 decided to note was "yawing," but these chapters especially have a whole bunch of nautical terms that are not necessarily well-known by all, so here's a handy glossary to help you out. I probably should've supplied this earlier in the story. The only thing I have to add is that the Execution Dock Mr. Hands refers to is, not surprisingly, a dock in London where executions were held by the British Admiralty Court for crimes at sea, like pirating, smuggling, and mutiny.

But, more importantly, we get to see this illustration of Jim up in the rigging, aiming both pistols right at Israel Hands's face, while Hands prepares to throw his dagger into Jim's shoulder:

32:58 - "'One more step, Mr. Hands,' said I, "and I'll blow your brains out!"

Action! Excitement! The obligatory attempt to sanctimoniously show the villain the error of his ways by threat of Hell!


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!

Treasure Island, Chapters Three to Five

In which Billy Bones lets on that his old comrades are after his sea chest and is delivered the Black Spot by a scary blind man, the bodies begin to pile up, the inn is lost, and Jim bemoans the weakness of women, or at least his mother.



Here again we find useful the notes from 1908 (though I find it curious that they noted Blind Pew's "tap-tap-tapping" and not the curious phrase "grope down the dingle," where "dingle" apparently means "a small, wooded valley." It also doesn't count "swabs" — do I need to tag pirate slang? — which means "good-for-nothings," and since Billy is referring to doctors who perform blood-letting as such, I wonder if it's not more accurate than Stevenson maybe intended. "Apoplexy" is also a fun, old-fashioned word for a stroke.

We also see another example of the curious anonymizing that was common in many old school novels, like in the first installment where the year is listed as "17—." Here, Mr. Dance dispatches a man to "B——," wherever that may be. I'm sure there was some valid reasoning behind it at the time, but it's really annoying for reading aloud.

Oh, and we get another good illustration from Mr. Wyeth! This one shows that terrible old Blind Pew flailing around after all his mates abandoned him, before being trampled to death by a horse. Good times.

26:35 - "Tapping up and down the road in a frenzy, and groping and calling for his comrades."

And I suppose I needn't really have worried so much about being stuck with Billy Bones's voice, as things turned out.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!