Course material

1. Respectfully challenge a classmate's response. Explain your...
Respectfully challenge a classmate's response. Explain your disagreement in detail and
provide textual support (quotes with in-text citations). Mary Shelley "The Mortal Immortal"
In the story "The Mortal Immortal" the narrator Winzy, a 323 year old immortal man. He
recklessly drinks an elixir hoping it will cure the love he shares for Bertha, who he falsely
believes has left him. Although the elixir did not cure him of love in a direct sense, it gave
him the gift or curse of immortality. In the story we see Winzy stay by the side of his wife
until she dies, and encountering the moral issues that arise while being immortal, while
slowly watching his wife age and eventually die. After her death he seemed to lose a part of
himself and is in a permanent state of turmoil. In the story, Winzy says, "Neither ambition
nor avarice can enter my mind, and the ardent love that gnaws at my heart, never to be
returned" (Shelly 1044). This shows that because he has already loved his wife throughout
her entire life, he will never be able to love someone with such intensity as he did her. This
is further shown when he also states that he can never be ambitious again, he has lost his
drive in life. His soul is prisoner to his immortal body. These ideas convey that without
mortality the beauty of life disappears. He can't truly love another while knowing he is
going to watch them die, and he can't love life when it itself is the very thing that haunts
him. The elixir of immortality cured him of love, passion and all the things that would make
life special to someone.