ILLUSTRATION |
At the same time as Furbisher was watching the film, a small girl many miles from him was watching it too.
Her name was Rachel.
Her eyes opened wide as the coloured spectacle unveiled itself before her.
The moon. The churchyard. The icy mist. The tomstones. The digging man swinging his pickaxe up and down, slowly and methodically.
She winced:
“I wonder if he knows how horrible he is!”
Slowly he climbed the mountain, dragging a corpse behind him, turning once to look back at the churchyard. His face was old, his eyes full of melancholy and his smile revealed a row of broken yellow teeth.
“He could be any of the farmers in the village”, she shuddered.
Frankenstein slaved over his operating table until, finally exhausted, he finished his piece of sparepart surgery. Rachel became pale and very frightened. As the monster lifted itself from the table, a thought struck her.
“If Frankenstein could make monsters then, what kind of monsters do they make now?”
Rachel felt sad when the murdered Dr. Frankenstein lay in the snow, his monster standing over him, grinning. But in her heart she could not help feeling that the Doctor was still alive and well.
Rachel has not the knowledge of Dr. Furbisher, but she reaches almost the same conclusion. Why? Is it because:
She observes with open eyes and a living heart?
She has read it in a book?
She has a very vivid imagination
She is a child genius?
She has a telepathic rapport with Furbisher?
Furbisher has a child's heart simplicity and a pure look at things?
Choose one reason,
and justify your response in a few lines.
2. Rachel already has a living heart. In fact, she lives what Furbisher has only dreamed.
Is the living heart – which represents the opposite of our “grave” minds – the way to:
Make monsters into human beeings?
Make universes of day?
Make bubbles of reality?
Make us hear the music of life?
Make us alive to the feeling of life?
Make us open our eyes to reality?
Choose one point and say why you think it is the way, or why it is not.