A Long Farewell
"Nature was the same, as when she was the kind mother of the human race;
now, childless and forlorn, her fertility was a mockery;
her loveliness a mask for deformity" (329).
M. Shelley's The Last Man (1826)
Points
for Reflection
M. Shelley's The Last Man (1826), chps 20-23
1.
questions generated by students for in-class, roundtable session . . .
Mary Shelley's The Last Man, chps 24-30
- What additional insights into the human mind does today's reading offer?
- How does the plague shape attitudes towards the disabled, diseased, mentally ill, elderly, and infirm? How do the survivors respond to these types of easily marginalized individuals?
- Does some supernatural power make itself known in the workings of Nature in today's reading, or can every weird event be explained away as the result of characters' over-active imaginations?
- Have we finally seen the end of humankind's belligerent, war-making, polarizing impulses?
- What does this novel suggest about the relationship between fear and religious faith?
- Does Lionel disparage all religion as destructive?
- At what point does Mary Shelley directly reinsert her father's notion of necessity?
- Are the human mind's powers of reason, so glorified by Mary Shelley's Lionel (412) and P. B. Shelley himself in his poems, ultimately proven too limited to be of much use in the face of an apocalypse?
- What socially constructed ideas appear to have finally died on pages 415-16?
- Why might Mary Shelley choose to reintroduce the powers of both Nature and music at this late point in the novel (418-20), as humanity appears on the brink of extinction?
- Is the notion of an afterlife reified or questioned in chps 24-27?
- Lionel foreshadows, once again, that he will eventually be the last living being on the planet, and argues that he will become a kind of Oedipus “whose agonizing pangs, and sorrow-tainted life were to be the engines, wherewith to lay bare the secrets of destiny, and reveal the meaning of the enigma, whose explanation closed the history of the human race” (427). Does Lionel, in the novel’s remaining pages, “reveal” an “enigma” which would explain the erasure of humanity?
- What is Lionel describing in euphemistic terms in the following passage concerning Clara and Evelyn? “[A]ll of love of which our nature is susceptible, is not yet awake within them: we cannot guess what will happen then, when nature asserts her indefeasible and sacred powers . . .” (427).
- Is there a plausible explanation for why Clara loses her joie de vie—her happiness—as she leaves Milan, grows timid around Lionel and Adrian, and hangs out only with Evelyn for a time (432-33)?
- Which scenes in today's reading most clearly delineate the supremacy of Nature over humanity?
- Why does Clara feel peace in the midst of the storm that ravages their boat during their attempt to cross from Venice, Italy to Greece?
- Does Lionel's emotional reaction, once he realizes he is alone, seem psychologically plausible?
what do you make of Lionel's actions once he is alone?
- Does Lionel ever reconcile himself to and embrace the isolation foisted on him by circumstance?
- Do the Arts continue to seem irrelevant and inadequate as the novel draws to a close?
- Which proves more powerful in his solitude, Lionel’s imagination or his powers of reason?
- Recall that Lionel once approached a bestial, animal-like state in the days before meeting Adrian (18). Does he return to such a state during his year in Rome?
- Why does Lionel not commit suicide?
- Could this story be made into a film? Would it be well-received if it were?
- Which moments late in this novel seem so passionate that they appear to resemble the personal outcry of an author who has actually experienced what she is describing?
- Did Adrian at any point in the novel manifest faults or character flaws?
- In this roman à clef, what real-life individuals did each of the main characters represent?
Alpine Scene (1802)
J. M. W. Turner
Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu
