Monday, November 21, 2016
The Last Man
First, I feel the need to say that I did not read the context before starting chapter 29... so, of course, I was initially very confused about who was speaking, what was happening, etc. After going back and reading the context, everything had a little more perspective. However, I think it's interesting to think about my perception before reading the context. I assumed the narrator was Mary Shelley--why? I'm not really sure. But that brought into question why she was on a boat, which led me to believe this (obviously) was fictional. Even without the context, I immediately assumed this story was inspired by a tragic event in Shelley's life. So, when I read the context after the story, the setting and personification of the ocean became more understandable. At the very end of chapter 30, Verney states, "To that water--cause of my woes--perhaps now to be their cure I would betake myself" (898). This is interesting when considering a diary entry from May 14, 1824. Shelley says, "The last man! Yes, I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me" (902). This clarifies the "disillusioned examination of Romanticism" brought up in the beginning context. The "beloved race" being fellow romantic writers; perhaps Shelley felt that in losing her husband, society also lost the only other "relic" of a romantic writer.
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I think your response is pretty interesting. I read the introduction first and maybe something was lost in my doing so.
ReplyDeleteAlthough this is obviously a work of a fiction, I felt like it was autobiographical in the sense you mentioned as well.
Because we start at chapter 29 of Shelley's story, I had to do some research on the story. Afterward it was easy to read this as the character instead of assuming it was her. Yet, when continuing to the letters she wrote, concerning the deaths of her children, I see how the story could be seen from her own point of view. I think that is what makes "The Last Man" so compelling: She puts her own thoughts and fears of being alone into her character, Verney. Without her personal fears, the story might have turned out differently.
ReplyDeleteI like your point at the end about Shelley realizing the impact of Percy's death on society, not just herself, and that connection to a "disillusioned examination of Romanticism". The chapters we read focused a lot on Rome and the monuments there and the futility of Verney trying to distract himself with them and with other art; but maybe the disillusionment was not with art in general, like I had originally thought, but with the loss of a particular "race" of artists like Percy.
ReplyDeleteVerney's connection with the ocean is interesting to me. I have been reading a lot of Freud and Lacan, and this idea of returning to the womb (or, in this case, to the ocean) is mentioned repeatedly throughout the excerpt. The boat in which the party is traveling is described as if it was "an offspring of the sea, and the angry mother sheltered her endangered child," yet the sea (the mother) is the very thing responsible for endangering it.
ReplyDeleteI think "relic" is an interesting way for Shelley to put it. Although "Last Man" deals with the end of the human race, traces of our existence, relics, still remain in the form of monuments, books, and even in the shepherding dog. While I believe it's true that Shelley is writing this in response to her feelings of loneliness, of having survived so many of her fellow poets, I also believe this story is dealing with matters in the same vein as Ozymandias and The Image in Lava. I think what Shelley is touching upon is this need not only by artists, but by people in general, to preserve our beings after we're gone. Perhaps "Last Man" is meant to show that an echo of humanity can still be felt. Whether that's preferable or not is up to the reader to decide.
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