Ode on a Grecian URL

Let's think about monsters for a bit. What do we mean by "monster"? (Don't consult a dictionary--write your own definition.) How does a monster differ from a human? What do we mean when we call a human a monster--for example, if we were to call Victor Frankenstein a monster what, specifically, would we be saying?

Why do we call Frankenstein's monster a monster? He's called a number of other things in Frankenstein--Creature, Wretch, even Being. Pick one of the instances in which these terms come up--how does its use differ from "monster"? Why have we, as a culture of readers, settled on "monster" rather than on one of these other terms?

Prof. Ortiz-Robles's reading of Frankenstein has hinged on this idea of the monster as a vacancy, an idea he connects to Shelley's "Mont Blanc." But how does this connection work--how is the monster vacant other than in the unspeakability of his features?

Read the last stanza of "Mont Blanc" (p. 723) closely: how can you divide this stanza into sections? What sorts of words appear, and in what order? How would you describe the meter and rhyme scheme? Towards what do all of these poetic features point?

Now read the monster's last words in Frankenstein (p. 1034) just as closely, even for meter and rhyme. How is the language here different from the language at the end of "Mont Blanc"? How is it similar?

The most important point here, however, is to figure out how these two passages describe vacancy. What is the poetic or ethical value of vacancy?