Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is an exciting story replete with love, passion, marriages, births and funerals. The way in which the story is told, Nelly Dean telling the story to Mr. Lockwood who then in turn tells it to us, may seem to remove the reader from the story, but it does not; and though the narrator is removed from the story as he hasn't even met some of the characters involved, this does not take away from our interest in Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw, Heathcliff, Edgar and Isabella Linton, and the children in the story. Because Mr. Lockwood doesn't know first-hand the story of these characters, sometimes there is the feeling that everything he is saying is purely tentative, but the contrary seems to happen through this circumlocution. The reader is constantly made aware of how little is known and thus the reader is also intrigued by the complexity of the abstraction.

Bronte uses a lot of symbolism in Wuthering Heights. Ghosts are consistently being used in the story, giving the narrative a supernatural tone at times. The weather is another symbol in the book - such as intense winds at the Heights and the storm when Mr. Earnshaw dies, when Heathcliff goes away from Wuthering Heights, and also when Heathcliff dies. Heathcliff removes Catherine's locket in which a lock of Edgar's hair resides from her dead body. He later replaces it with his own hair, as he believes that Catherine always belonged to him. Nelly then takes Edgar's hair and weaves in with Heathcliff's hair, and puts it back in the locket, signifying the way in which their lives were part of one another. Windows and doors are yet another symbol in the book in that they are always locked (e.g. Mr. "Lockwood" arriving at Wuthering Heights finds the doors locked, Nelly and Catherine locked in rooms,). Other times, there are windows left open and coffins that are opened (i.e. Heathcliff and Catherine's so they can come together in death).

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a thrilling narrative that is at once engaging as well as controversial in terms of some of the novels themes -- religion and class, for example. The first part of the novel "The History of a Family" can be read like the strangest psychological case study of a family, as if it were plucked directly from a filing cabinet in the basement of a mental health institution. The history told to the reader is intriguing, peculiar and at the same time rather poetical. The style of language Dostoyevsky uses in this first part of the narrative is simple, lacking any flights of fancy or elaborations, yet there is something so simply poignant about it that the reader flows through the opening with ease and enjoyment.

The novel is at once harmonious and chaotic in its tale of the weakening of a family. The parricide of Fyodor Karamazov is not only about his death but it is a metaphor for the immoral nature of the entire Karamazov family.

The narration in The Brothers Karamazov achieves almost the same kind of polyphony as in Bronte's Wuthering Heights with its variety of narrators. Dostoyevsky seems to use the multiple styles and narrations in his work in order to draw the reader into the story and into each and every psychology of the characters. Through his use of polyphony narration (or omniscient narration), the reader is able to see that Dostoyevsky is not only a master storyteller, but he is also a pretty good psychologist.

Reading The Brothers Karamazov, the reader is also able to see how Dostoyevsky, again like Bronte, uses "doubles." In Wuthering Heights we see it in the characters (always as doubles), the double type of narration, and in the ghosts serving as in the present as a representation of the past. Dostoyevsky's world is almost like a dream.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is a Gothic novel that tells the tale of Victor Frankenstein and his creation. As seen in other Gothic works, Shelley employs the supernatural as her character of Dr. Frankenstein creates a monster made out of the leftover pieces of dead humans to create something that is nearly super-human in stature and strength.

What is perhaps most interesting about Shelley's novel, which she began in 1818, is that her machinations have turned into somewhat of a reality today as the current generation faces such issues as cloning and other kinds of genetic research. The monster was for Shelley a metaphor of science gone bad."

The novel is rife with themes of morality, creation, the need for approval from our creator, and where God fits in the world and in the lives of individuals. The reader sees in Frankenstein just how the creature fights with his own belief and idea about himself as well as needing to find the love and approval of his creator.

While the novel is more secular in origin than religious, there are definite religious themes and comparisons made by Shelley in the narrative. The creature has a certain inherent sense of right and wrong, which leads the reader to think about whether or not people are born with certain values and morality that reflect a higher power -- or their Creator. The novel is especially poignant because the reader is somehow able to relate to this monster and consider the plight of what it is to be a human being. His creation forces him to think about himself and what his purpose is in the world, just as all humans at one time or another (thanks to enlightenment) think about their own purpose in the world. The creature, like everyone, longs to be among others, yet is not quite sure where he fits in the scheme of others.