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Essay on Elder Scrolls III:Morrowind

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Elder Scrolls III:Morrowind

In the video game Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Bethesda Softworks 2002), you control a character that initially has no identity. You fill out a questionnaire that decides your character’s class; thus, you are responsible for creating the foundation for your character’s role in the game. As you maneuver your character through this world, you continue to shape his/her identity through new experiences. Your actions and interactions with other characters in this virtual world influence and are influenced by your character’s role. There are repercussions for negative behavior. Your game play—the narrative possibilities available to you, and the ones you actually take—changes and evolves depending on how your …show more content…

James Whale’s Frankenstein

“If you take the position that all things are possible, you will be astounded at what you can create.”

--Taurus Horoscope for December 11, 2003, from the Page-A-Day Calendar (Workman Publishing 2003)

In James Whale’s Frankenstein, Henry Frankenstein creates a new character out of the pieces of former lives: “I created it with my own hands with the bodies I took from graves, gallows, anywhere,” he explains. The creature is an amalgam of hot spots to other people’s pasts; he is a collage of textual bodies and discontinued narrative possibilities. Frankenstein blurs boundaries (such as between life and death) and juxtaposes dissimilar features. In this way, his creation is like a hypertextual medium (Landow 151, 158) with limitless connections. The use of dead parts in the creation of this hypertext, however, foreshadow the possibility that these connections are all dead-ends.

The creature’s physical nature reflects Frankenstein’s belief that “all things are possible.” As Frankenstein tells Waldman, “Where would we be if nobody tried to find out what lies beyond? Have you never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars….” Frankenstein imbues his creation with a desire to see beyond one’s own worldview, to inhabit other roles, to play out infinite stories, and through this, to ultimately “discover eternity.”

Frankenstein’s creature seems to be born of multiple possibilities and numerous

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