Eesha Ahmed- Special Collections

Visiting University of Delaware’s special collections in the library was a much more interesting experience than initially anticipated. Not only was the material vast and dating back centuries, but the curator gave so much insight and information into all the items. What was extremely helpful was how much the curator knew about everything that was there; from the date it was created to the content of the books, which was especially useful for the many books that were not in English. What I found interesting about the collections themselves were how well they were preserved, and as the curator told us, will remain to be preserved as most of the books actually will stay in a fairly sturdy state for centuries. Furthermore, the amount of monsters integrated with real animals was astonishing, and we were all left to wonder whether or not the people in that time truly believed in those make-believe creatures or not.

What particularly interested me was the novel The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, and it was almost entirely because of the short yet intriguing description of the novel given by the curator. The novel is essentially about a man who time travels into the future, into a time where there are friendly and normal humans on top of land, and monsters underground. It was written in 1895, and this novel, as well as many other novels and texts from the collection, gave an interesting insight on the time back then. Many people in that time seemed to either genuinely believe in monsters entirely, or thought of their potential existence to be enough to integrate in not only numerous fiction novels, but also scientific texts on zoology. After seeing all of the ideas people in the past had about the future, specifically the idea Wells had on various points of the future, it gave me a new perspective on different time periods and makes me wonder what assumptions we are making today that will either be spot-on in a couple centuries or entirely false.

1931 Frankenstein Movie Review

This movie adaptation of the book was lacking in many areas, but it also numerous new qualities. What I found most interesting was the name switches between Henry and Victor, because not only did it have me questioning how well I knew the book, but it also still makes no sense to me why they felt the need to do that. I think this movie was a horrible representation of Shelley’s Frankenstein, because what resonated with me most from the novel was how in the process of creating and handling a “monster”, Victor Frankenstein was revealed to be the true monster, and the movie had little to no coverage of this. The film adaptation almost entirely dehumanized Frankenstein’s monster into a killing machine with minimal intellect and anger issues, whereas the book showed how insightful and meaningful the monster’s thoughts actually were. In my  opinion, the humanizing of Frankenstein was not only a major part of the plot, but also one of the main reasons I enjoyed reading it so much. There are millions of stories of monsters coming to hurt people, but what made Frankenstein stand out was the character given to his monster, and how well the xenophobia was displayed and integrated into the major plot. By the middle-to-end of the novel, the reader (me, at least) would feel almost nothing for the characters that died or were in danger, but we would have so much sadness for Frankenstein’s monster for being created in a world where he was truly alone and ostracized, with even his creator turning his back on him. Despite how little I think this film accurately portrays the novel’s plot, I would 100% recommend this to all my friends who have read Frankenstein, because all negative comments aside, this was an extremely funny movie (even though most of the funniest scenes were probably not intended to be funny by the creators).

Introduction: Eesha Ahmed

Hi everyone! My name is Eesha Ahmed and I like being called Eesha but my friends have given me so many nicknames that I also like being called. The most notable of which being Eesh, Eesh-kabob, Eesh-quiche, and Wiz KalEesha, given to me in freshmen year biology before performing a protein rap for the class. Feel free to call me any of these (most people tend to go with Eesha or Eesh).

My current major is biochemistry, on the pre-med track, and potential minor in economics. I may switch to biomedical engineering, or another kind of engineering, sometime this year, but for now I have my sights set on becoming a neurologist.

My earliest memory of watching a horror movie was at 4 years old, but since my family has a tendency of leaving babies in the room while watching horror movies, it very well could have been earlier. I have been obsessed with scary movies for as long as I can remember, but the ones that always interest me most are ones with a good plot line and a fair amount of screamers. Zombies terrify me more than most monsters, but that’s probably why I like zombie movies so much. More often than not I can count on them freaking me out for about 2 hours. My favorite zombie movies include Train to Busan, World War Z, and 28 Weeks Later.

My least favorite monsters are ghosts, mostly based on ghost-movies having a tendency to be super boring and awful. Ghost movies have the potential to be really spooky but they usually just waste a few hours of my life. Aside from ghost movies being awful, actual ghost stories I have heard do tend to spook me out sometimes because of how realistic they seem and their potential to be true, another reason why they are my least favorite.

My goals for this class are to become a better writer and further improve my critical thinking skills.