Concetti Chiave
- The appearance of Frankenstein's creature is described as terrifying, with yellow skin, wrinkled features, long black hair, and watery eyes.
- The concept of the "uncanny" involves the unsettling feeling when something appears familiar yet is disturbingly different.
- Ernst Jentsch defined the "uncanny" in 1906 as the doubt about whether something that seems alive is truly animate.
- Sigmund Freud expanded on the "uncanny" in 1919, suggesting it arises when the familiar becomes unexpectedly strange, causing fear.
- In storytelling, creating uncertainty about whether a character is human or an automaton effectively evokes the uncanny.
Monsters and Madmen
The Frankenstein’s creature appearance is terrifying: people run away when they see him and the creature himself is frightened when he sees his own face reflected in the water. This is how Frankenstein describes him: “His skin was yellow and wrinkled. His hair was long and black. His eyes were watery. He was monstrous!”.
The creature has been represented many times, but which representation is most effective? Consider the idea of the “uncanny”.
He also said that in story-telling “one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton”.
The idea was developed by Sigmund Freud in his 1919 essay “The Uncanny”: something seems familiar to us, but then we realise that it is different from the familiar, and this frightens us. This explains, for example, the horrific effect in film and fiction of zombies or dolls that seem to be alive.
Accedi a tutti gli appunti
Tutor AI: studia meglio e in meno tempo
