Jeremy Griffith: author of Free: The End of The Human Condition (1988), Beyond The Human Condition (1991), and, in 2003, the Australasian bestseller A Species In Denial...Philosopher, Albert Camus, said once. He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.Humans to this day have struggled to find answers to two questions, who is our creator and what role does he or she play, and if there is a creator why does evil exist, withing the world and why are men not divine. I'd like to start of by quoting my most recent book:"Philosophers assume a God exists, and that he or she created the human race. But then the greatest of all paradoxes must ...view middle of the document...
." Hopkins uses Romantic language when talking about God and nature and this emphasizes his point. So we can see in Gods Grandeur, that Hopkins, is saying that God the creator is the source of beauty, and that he believes that God is manifested in nature.However as we track through Hopkins life, we see that he suffered from Depression and began to question his faith later in his life. These issues are raised in his later poetry, his depressive sonnets, the terrible sonnets. Looking at them we can see a fundamental change in the way Hopkins relates to the creator. Hopkins becomes more negative, and questioning. He states in No Worst there is none "comforter, where is your comforting/Mary mother of us, where is your relief" We see here a huge shift from what he states his earlier poems where God is the source of joy "with ah bright wings."Hopkins imagery is further testament to this change. He states "all life death does end and each day dies with sleep." We can see here very negative imagery. We still see some romantic language, but in a negative connotation, and we see creeping in Gothic phrases like "fury had shrieked" "wretch, under a ...whirlwind." Very different images and connotations to what we saw in his earlier sonnets. Hopkins poetry undergoes a fundamental shift, or a falling of man.Just as with Hopkins, Shelly's "Frankenstein" also marvels at natural creation. She writes, in the character of Victor when speaking of a mountain "of this glorious presence chamber of imperial nature," "these sublime and magnificent scenes...which afforded me," She writes in Romantic language, and vividly glorifies nature. However when Shellys describes Victor seeing his creation she writes "a breathless horror and disgust filled my heart." This contrast between what God creates and what man creates is highlighted by the Romantic language used by Shelly to describe nature, and the Gothic language used when speaking of the Monster. Looking from a Calvinistic viewpoint, Shelly provides some answer as to what creates evil here, by saying with the character of Victor, "how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier is the man who believes his native town to be the world than he who becomes greater than his nature will allow." She states that when man, Victor crosses the ethical divide and himself becomes a creator, or tries to imitate God, then chaos, in the form of the Monster towards the end of the nov...
