Poetry in Hands

Throughout the context of “Hands,” Wing Bibblebaum is characterized both as a grotesque and a poet. He is also described as a fat little old man who walks nervously up and down. Wind Bibblebaum has also been the town mystery who is “submerged in a sea of doubts.” Yet, his identity doesn’t come from his appearance, but his hands. They are described as “the slender expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or behind his back, came forth and became the piston rods of his machinery of expression.” And it is also because of these hands, that Wing Bibblebaum is not named the writer. Although, Wing Bibblebaum is reclusive and grotesque because of his failure to voice his beliefs, his hands are the outlets that allow Wing to express himself, his thoughts. Additionally, Wing’s hands are described as “his distinguishing feature, the source of his frame.” He can pick the highest number of strawberries because of them. He is able to teach his students and mold their minds so that he was able “to carry a dream into the young minds.” Yet, the hands also epitomize grotesqueness because they are feared. Wing’s hands aren’t loved, but hated for their dexterity and movement. Thus for that reason, Wing hides them. Likewise, it is because of these hands that Wing is thought of as a homosexual predator. Throughout the novel, homosexuality is looked down upon by the village where Wing once taught his pupils. Simple because Wing showed his passion by “the stroking of shoulders and the touching of the hair was a part of the schoolmaster’s effort to carry a dream into the young minds.” Wing therefore was “meant by nature to be a teacher of youth” because he wanted to craft ideas, establish truths in the minds of these individuals, but was mistaken and wrongly judged as a homosexual because of the activities his hands were associated with. As a result, Wing begins to fear his own hands and view them as dangerous. Even when he is with George, he is hesitant about his hands as “slowly they stole forth and lay upon George Willard’s shoulders.” Although Wing doesn’t know what crime he has committed, he realizes that the hands are guilty. Yet, it is strange that Wing refers to them as a separate entity, as if he doesn’t have any control—they seem to have a mind of their own. Therefore, Anderson is directly challenging society for chastising those that it doesn’t understand. He does this especially through the general description of Wing’s character—“the man, who was bald and whose nervous little hands fiddle about the bare white forehead as though arranging a mass of tangled locks.” In context, baldness symbolizes his loss of strength and virility. As a result Wing is portrayed as a delicate figure that is unable to realize his dream and as a result, remains lonely because of his hands which have caused him misunderstanding. Yet Wing is only grotesque because of confusion alone. He is not truly homosexual and therefore his grotesqueness does not derive itself from an issue of sexuality. Instead, it is his futility in life and his isolation. Thus by the conclusion when George fails to appear, Wing’s life illustrates how like all the other grotesques in the story his life becomes static and disillusioned, a prevailing theme among the early 1900s.

Hidden Parallels

"The sounding cataract/ Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,/ The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,/ Their colours and their forms, were then to me/ An appetite: a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, or any interest/ Unborrowed from the eye." Shelley's incorporation of Romantic literature in Frankenstein has been influenced by not only her husband but Wordsworth and Coleridge who have shaped the ideas and thoughts of her literature as illustrated in their Preface--"The poet considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally a mirror of the fairest and most interesting properties of nature." Thus Shelley's admiration of nature can be characterized through her continuous usage of the sublime and supernatural forces that steer her character's emotions and thoughts. Throughout the Romantic period, Shelley and Wordsworth both used nature as an alleviating element that rejuvenates the spirits and as a restorative factor which alleviates pains or wounds. For Wordsworth, he reminisces about Tintern Abbey after he hasn't visited for several years. His recollection is filled with beautiful imagery concerning the landscape, the cliffs, the forests. Now, however, after residing in the city, he realizes how Tintern Abbey has influenced him into his adulthood and later years even as he moves away from further and further, he still holds pieces of Tintern Abbey in his heart. During Frankenstein, a similar reverence for nature is found as Shelley uses nature to contrast with Victor and the Creation's emotions and pains after experiencing something tragic such as a death. In the context of this quote, Shelley extracts lines 77 through 84 of Wordsworth's poem, Tintern Abbey, in order to illustrate nature's role in Frankenstein as it influences both Victor and the Creation. This quote is a lamentation by Victor, expressing his grief following his best friend, Henry Cleval yet the quote serves a double purpose as it represents not only Victor's anguish but also that of his Creation. Although Shelley doesn't focus on the actual abbey which Wordsworth describes, she invokes the imagery of nature and alludes to a higher reference of God as she capitalizes on the relationship between man and nature, man and God, that both Victor and his Creation face. In the context of the quote, Victor is referring to Cleval because of his love for nature, while referencing himself likewise for the guilt and sorrow that he feels for destroying it. Moreover, the tone of the quote from Tintern Abbey depicts an ominous portrayal of nature even as it is glorified. Despite the fact that the tall, threatening natural objects Shelley uses to heighten tension, she also uses these natural elements to forebode the soon upcoming death of Cleval through Victor's perspective. Despite the common theme of nature between Shelley and Wordsworth, isolation is yet again symbolized through the hermit figure that Wordsworth writes, "Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire/ The hermit sits alone." Through this quote, one is reminded of Shelley's description of the Creation and his lonely, wandering lifestyle as well as his first encounter with fire. Representing the hermit figure in Tintern Abbey, the Creation who experiences fire during his creation also stays secluded, eschewed from the rest of society until his death--again, he is completely alone and he decides to die by incarcerating himself in flames.