The Last Man and the Plague of Empire Essay example -- Shelley The Las

The uttermost Man and the Plague of Empire I find myself in easy agreement with Alan Richardsons perceptive account of The Last Man as a novel written in the service of British colonial interests and of Mary Shelley as an individual swept up in the collective arrogance of nineteenth-century imperial England. In one striking example of the novels colonialist complicity, Lionel Verney presumptuously declares that Englands prime resource is its people (its children 323) whereas the greatest assets of the equatorial regions are their commodities--their spices, plants, and fruits. Verney only sentimentally recalls Britains history of unshrinking exploration (read colonization and economic exploitation) of foreign nations under the crowns sponsorship, as he grieves for lost times when man walked the earth fearless, in front Plague had become Queen of the World (346). It appears crystal-clear that The Last Man contains fewer sites of resistance than are present in Frankenstein and more moments of racism, jingoism, and religious contempt therefore, in order to facilitate conversation, I will address here primarily the possible meanings of the novels few heteroglossic moments, including the ironic twist or two towards the end that Alan Richardson mentions, in addition to posing some suggestive, or polemical, questions. The horror of The Last Man may for Shelley lie in its revelation that the operations of nature obliterate some(prenominal) civilized and barbaric, Christian and Mahometan, with the same moral neutrality. In the end, Adrian, the sophisticated blue-eyed boy (27), a stand-in for Percy Shelley, s... ...e United States, 1898-1935. http//www.accinet.ent/fjzwick/ail98-35.html (December 2003). Greenblatt, Stephen Jay. Learning to Curse Essays in archaeozoic Modern Culture.New York Routledge, 1990. Holmes, Richard. Shelley The PursuitLondon Penguin,1974. Kipling, Rudyard. The White Mans Burden. McClures Magazin e 12 (Feb.1899). http//www.accinet.net/fjzwick/kipling.html In Jim Zwick,ed., Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898-1935. http//www.accinet.ent/fjzwick/ail98-35.html (January 2004). Richardson, Alan. Romantic Circles The Last Man and the Plague of Empire. http//prometheus.emory.edu/RC/mwsprogram.html (September 2003). Shelley, Mary W. The Last Man. Betty T. Bennett and Steven E. Jones, eds. http//www.rc.umd.edu/editions/editions.htmlmws September 2003