Instructors’ Teaching Experience

I usually assign this story on the day before we begin Frankenstein. Marquez’s story works as a great introduction to some of the important issues I ask my students to consider while reading Frankenstein, including religion, language, and the boundary between humanity and monstrosity. The students tend to enjoy the story but have a difficult time coming to terms with the ending because they don’t see Marquez offering an explicit moral and they really, really want there to be one. This can lead into a great discussion about story conventions/reader expectations and what it means to defy those conventions and/or expectations. [T. Johnson, travis-johnson@uiowa.edu]