Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Gothic novel Frankenstein is a great representation of the Romantic era. While elements of adventure, terror and the picturesque are present in Shelley’s novel, parallels can be drawn with today’s society and culture. Victor Frankenstein creates a creature in which he becomes obsessed with, likewise in Letter four of the novel Walton becomes just as obsessed with Victor for a moment. This web project will help to guide readers through the idea of obsession, with examples from both the text and contemporary culture. Ultimately theorizing how obsession, and lack of self-awareness can lead to a person falling apart.

             Shelley created a tipping point with her novel Frankenstein. There has been a trend in entertainment, creating a new image of iconic wonder with each generation. In her novel, Victor's creature became his obsession from the time of creation to the very end of his life. His creature became more than he could handle. In letter IV, Walton rescues Victor and brings him aboard his ship. In that moment he becomes obsessed with the idea of getting Victor better and making sure that nobody bothers him in his fragile state. He shares this same quality with Victor and people of today; coveting what they think they know, or what they do not know and are determined to understand.

From my understanding of the text, and contemporary trend followers, is that the mind is influenced by the bizarre and idealistic lifestyles. Victor Frankenstein had a goal of creating life from the lifeless, essentially creating a replica of human perfection in his opinion. The entertainment industry of today has the same goals as Victor, to create images and replicas of iconic lifestyles in their celebrities. But the problem with this, like Victor's creature, is that these replicas of life are dehumanized in the process. The creature became an exploitation of Victor's genius, and celebrities of the entertainment industry are exploited to become obsessions of the pop culture public. Their is a sense of entitlement from these creations, their talent, or life, is not their own because "we" are the reason for their success, "we" created them.

During the Romantic era people longed to experience the sublime and picturesque, which lead them to the far corners of the world, where uncharted and beautiful landscapes awaited. It was also during this time when a person’s experience of an adventure was transcribed into literature. Stories of journeys across the world and poems of beautiful scenery were kept in high literary regard, in came in the form of keepsakes. Contemporary culture has similar, but far less romantic ways of representing their idea of the sublime and picturesque. Modern culture has moved nature into living rooms across the world by means of the travel channel. It has also turned literary documentation from keepsake to blog sites. And the sublime, picturesque lifestyle of adventure has changed from the great outdoors, to the celebrity elite. Everyone wants to experience the lives of the romantic, and get into the minds of those who live lives that are seemingly more adventurous.

            The web project is a representation of modern culture’s lack of the sublime and picturesque as defined from the Romantic era. There are subtle influences to metaphors and not so subtle visual parallels from twenty-first century celebrity influences. In navigating the web page, readers are able to read assignments focused on the assigned readings, while viewing visual images, which correlate to the project assignments. The reason for brief descriptions of the images used is a response to how the romantic era contributed to culture through literature and the modern era today contributes through visuals.

            At the top of the web page there is an image of Boris Karloff’s nose as Frankenstein. In choosing an image, it best fit to represent the creature, as contemporary audiences know him. The reason for the image of the nose is because in an era of media culture and scandal, the only true sense is that of smell. The novel is true to all the senses that each character represents, but today honesty is harder to come by.

            Each page has a background color of black and gray, the font is simple and black as well. In doing this, there is further emphasis on how modern culture has lost the vitality that influenced the Romantic era. Visual media began its journey as black and white before it completely destroyed the minds of the masses in color.

            There is an additional page on the site that represents the demise of Victor and his creature. It is called Entertainerstein, with pictures of celebrities who have been targets of obsession. The Romantic era has landmarks and local that represents the ideals of the people who lived during that time. While Contemporary ideals are represented by the faces of popular celebrities. Letter four from the novel, which this web project is based on, describes Walton’s seemingly star-struck reaction to Victor. Anything could be happening to the conditions at sea while they are on the ship, but with Victor there he is completely distracted. And being that close to Victor has made Walton witness to all sides of Victor, the good, the bad and the ugly.

            There has been a recent trend in celebrity gossip that is similar to the honest sides of Victor that Walton has the privilege to experience. What people want to know most about their icons now, is what they are like in everyday life outside of the glitz and glamour of the limelight. People want to experience the sublime by hoping those in which they hold in high regard are as normal as they are.

            All together, this digital project is a contradiction to itself. The central theme, and call to action, of the web page is to become one with the natural again, stepping away from gossip and becoming a literary individual as they did in the Romantic era. But in an era where digital media reigns supreme, a web project is far more affective in developing thought than only an essay would. Where have the spiritual ideals gone, those replaced by ideals of fortune and fame? Obsession in the unknown has created a world of people that let time pass them by while being consumed by news updates. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Gothic novel Frankenstein is a great representation of the Romantic era. While elements of adventure, terror and the picturesque are present in Shelley’s novel, parallels can be drawn with today’s society and culture. And this web project is a representation of both eras presented with hard work and effort.