VCE Tip Three – Example VCE Text Response
February 29th, 2016 | Published in e-news, English teacher resource
The following example for Text Response can be of value and applied to other texts set for VCE.
Frankenstein
If you are studying Frankenstein this year here are a few things that you need to be aware of.
Although there are many film interpreatations of the novel they are not useful to you as they all, even Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, takes too many liberties with the text.
There are two protagonists, Frankenstein and the creature. Note the doubling throughout the story. Each is both hero and villain, sympathetic and unsympathetic, victim and tormentor, pursuer and pursued; each is capable of noble and base motives and actions, such as the ambivalence of Frankenstein’s motives by wanting to improve humanity but for his own ends.
Written by a woman, the novel is a critique of masculinist science – note the kind of language the scientists use, particularly regarding Nature.
You should do some research into the background of the novel in order to understand its concerns and why it was controversial at the time, e.g. man taking the role of God as creator of life.
You should also research Gothic literature and understand why Frankenstein exemplifies the Gothic, e.g. the unresolved ending.
The Creature wants to know, as we do, where he has come from and why he is here.
