Dossier personnel LLCE anglais 1ère

« 2025 Imaginaries: How does the monster, as a fantastic creature, embody human fears and reflect the historical, social, and personal values of its time? Bibliography 1) Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, 1818……………………………………..….p.2 2) Stranger Things, the Duffer Brothers, 2016 ……………………..…p.3 3) Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton, 1990……………………………..p.4 4) Dr.

Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde, R.

L.

Stevenson, 1886………..……………..p.5 5) Essay: ”Why We Crave Horror Movies”, Stephen King, 1981…p.6 "Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.

[...] I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart." -- Chapter 5 “I had hardly placed my foot within the door before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted.

The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel, quite bare [...].” -- Chapter 11 “Another circumstance strengthened and confirmed these feelings.

Soon after my arrival in the hovel I discovered some papers in the pocket of the dress which I had taken from your laboratory.

At first I had neglected them, but now that I was able to decipher the characters in which they were written, I began to study them with diligence.

It was your journal of the four months that preceded my creation.

You minutely described in these papers every step you took in the progress of your work; this history was mingled with accounts of domestic occurrences.

You doubtless recollect these papers.

Here they are.

Everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own horrors and rendered mine indelible.

I sickened as I read.

‘Hateful day when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony.

‘Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance.

Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.’” -- Chapter 15 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818) . 2 ​ ​ ​ Stranger Things, movie poster, 2016 ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 3 ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Edward Scissorhands, movie poster, 1990 ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 4 “ I was born in the year 18— to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future.

And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public.

Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life.

Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame.

It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature.

In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress.

Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.

And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental, reacted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my members.

With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.” -- Chapter 10 “HENRY JEKYLL’S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE” The Strange Case of Dr.

Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde, R.

L.

Stevenson, 1886 ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 5 “[...] When we pay our four or five bucks and seat ourselves at tenthrow center in a theater showing a horror movie, we are daring the nightmare.

Why? Some of the reasons are simple and obvious.

To show that we can, that we are not afraid, [...] We also go to re-establish our feelings of essential normality [...] And we go to have fun.

Ah, but this is where the ground starts to slope away, isn’t it? Because this is a very peculiar sort of fun, indeed.

The fun comes from seeing others menaced — sometimes killed.

[...] It may be that horror movies provide psychic relief on this level because this invitation to lapse into simplicity, irrationality and even outright madness is extended so rarely.

We are told we may allow our emotions a free rein…or no rein at all.

If we are all insane, then sanity becomes a matter of degree.[...] Our emotions and our fears form their own body, and we recognize that it demands its own exercise to maintain proper muscle tone.

Certain of these emotional “muscles” are accepted — even exalted — in civilized society; they are, of course, the emotions that tend to maintain the status quo of civilization itself.

Love, friendship, loyalty, kindness — these are all the emotions that we applaud [...] When we exhibit these emotions, society showers us with positive reinforcement; we learn this even before we get out of diapers.

When, as children, we hug our rotten little puke of a sister and give her a kiss, all the aunts and uncles smile and twit and cry, “Isn’t he the sweetest little thing?” Such coveted treats as chocolate-covered graham crackers often follow.

But if we deliberately slam the rotten little puke of a sister’s fingers in the door, sanctions follow — angry remonstrance from parents, aunts and uncles; instead of a chocolate-covered graham cracker, a spanking.

But anti-civilization emotions don’t go away, and they demand periodic exercise.

We have such “sick” jokes as, “What’s the difference between a truckload of bowling balls and a truckload of dead babies?” (You can’t unload a truckload of bowling balls with a pitchfork … a joke, by the way, that I heard originally from a ten-year-old.) Such a joke may surprise a laugh or a grin out.... »