Discussion: Frankenstein

We began this discussion by, as usual, speaking a little bit about the background of the person as well as what was going on in the world (usually Europe) at the time. In this case, Mary Shelley's backstory was as interesting or even more so than the text we are reading of hers. There were several significant people in her life, most notably her father William Godwin and her lover (later husband) Percy Bysshe Shelley. As well, in the background, there is her deceased mother, early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, whose writings Mary Godwin Shelley would have read.


Mary Godwin would also have been exposed to many many intellectuals during her childhood: writers, philosophers, scientists, politicians etc. Percy Shelley was a fan of Mary Wollstonecraft and of William Godwin and falls in love with Mary Godwin when she is about 17. They elope (illegally as PB Shelley is still married to Harriet Westbrook) to the continent, accompanied by Mary's half-sister Claire Clairmont (who later becomes Lord Byron's lover). After a couple of years of moving around on the Continent and in Britain, the Shelleys head back to Europe, again accompanied by Claire. Byron has been ejected from England due to accusations of incest among other things and the Shelleys find themselves his neighbours in Switzerland. Claire becomes pregnant with Byron's child - her daughter Allegra was born in 1817. Prior to the summer of 1816 when she began Frankenstein, Mary Shelley bears two children, a daughter who dies a few days after birth and later a son, William. That Fall (1816), both Harriet and Mary's older half-sister, Fanny, commit suicide. Mary completes Frankenstein the following spring, 1817.

Frankenstein was conceived during a summer spent in Switzerland with PB Shelley, Claire Clairmont and Byron. The Shelleys had had to travel through France in 1814, just after Waterloo which had devastated France. Mary would have had a close connection to France given her mother's interest and presence in Paris during the French Revolution. There had been a volcanic eruption and the weather that summer was very bad and they had to amuse themselves indoors, reading gothic novels and German ghost stories and eventually challenging each other to write their own ghost story. Mary struggled to find a worthy idea and an image comes to her in a nightmare one night. Shelley continued to work on Frankenstein upon their return to England in the Fall, with PBS' encouragement and support. It is published in January 1818.


We discussed several of the noted themes in this novel: alienation, intellectual hubris and good science/knowledge vs bad science/knowledge. One area of discussion was about the difference between 'being' and 'appearing', a Rousseauian concept and which we see in the alienation and rejection of the creature based solely on his appearance.


Stephen also mentioned the recurrence of the word 'sympathy', here meaning a sympathy of minds. Captain Walton is looking for this and feels he had found it in Victor Frankenstein; the creature is desperate for this and never finds this, and this drives his actions his entire life.


Stephen's notes for this discussion include some "plots to follow": Walton’s Journey to find the “power that attracts the needle” – Walton is the one who “learns”, who has a chance to reform himself; those seeking glory via the pursuit of knowledge “secret of life”, becoming isolated from society; the Creature’s transition from benevolent “child of nature” to violent predator due to alienation and injustice.


There were also various themes: Nature vs Nurture – The Individual and Society; Dangerous Knowledge (including the failure of science to take responsibility for its creations which in the 20th century became a metaphor for issues around nuclear power); Parenting (and the issue of men trying to take over women's role as the carrier and nurturer of the child - women were particularly weak in this novel which is interesting considering the author is a woman) and the novel was also affected by the proximity of the French Revolution (power of reason, the innate human capacity for reason and benevolence and justice).


BYRON gave us some background on the Prometheus myth, important since Shelley's novel has the subtitle "The Modern Prometheus". Her husband, PB Shelley also considered himself a Prometheus. Prometheus was originally a trilogy (Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound and just the title of the 3rd, lost, play, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer). He was a titan and his name is thought to mean foresight (though one theory translates it as thief of fire). Prometheus helped Zeus but later interfered in Zeus' plans. He is seen as a trickster figure. In Hesiod's Theogeny, the use of fire was already known to humans but Zeus takes it away as punishment for a trick. Prometheus smuggles fire back to the humans in a giant fennel stalk. In Aeschylus' play, in addition to giving mankind fire, Prometheus is also thought to have taught them several arts of civilization such as science, medicine, agriculture as well as mathematics and writing He helped Zeus but then he intervened in Zeus' creation of man by giving humans fire. He became a figure who represented rebellion but who also represented human striving, especially after scientific knowledge. I don't know whether prior to Frankenstein Prometheus symbolized the risk of overreaching, hubris and unintended consequences.


Byron asked about Alienation: "the monster is victim to extreme alienation. Do we relate to this today? Some types of alienation include alienation from his creator, alienation form friends, alienation from himself. But, is the monster actually alienated from himself? Or are we today more separated from ourselves than the monster was? (On 131 the monster asks himself questions most people wouldn’t dare. He tries to understand himself.) Oddly, regarding alienation, we can perhaps see the monster and Frankenstein as aspects of one being separated from itself...could this be an outcome of what happens when we 'knowers' don't really know ourselves? Is this our warning?" Stephen noted that Frankenstein and his creature are never seen together and asked whether this could position them as 2 facets of a human being. Similarly, Frankenstein's friend Henry Clerval could be seen as an amalgam of various missing aspects of Frankenstein's being: lightness, gaiety, creativity, passion and compassion, conscience etc.

Byron had a lot to say about what Frankenstein tells about Beauty. "Our society is filthy. Our understanding of beauty is delusional and off target. We have people injecting botulin into their faces. We have people cutting the fat out of their bodies without making any more significant life changes. We have lineups at the makeup store where people pay plenty of money to paint over their skin. We have people putting silicone into their chests to look bustier. We have people eating liquid diets. People starving themselves to look thinner. People spending hours a day at the gym. And to what end? Is this end beauty? It is more likely that the hideous monster is a better example of what beauty ought to be? Most of us can’t accept ourselves in our own skins, so who are we to judge beauty? Are our imperfections what make us ‘ugly’? Or is it more likely our imperfections are what make us beautiful and we cannot see this?"


"Arguably, the monster’s biggest problem is that he is too human. In fact, he is more human and humane than people not created by Frankenstein. What does this say about our fellow creatures and the level of humanity with which we treat each other? How good have we gotten at being terrible human beings since the time this book was written? Would a present-day retelling look much different? Or is this really just a warning of our ambitions as human beings striving to be what we think better human beings would be? Victor says it himself: "seek happiness in tranquility, and avoid ambition" (220)."


Abilio also presented some aspects of the novel. He spoke about the danger not just of science but of knowledge, citing Facebook and do we want one site where everyone, from childhood friends to employers to people you met travelling etc, can find out masses of information about you. It made me think about data mining and the gigabytes of information companies and governments are collecting about us, to the point that analysis of our emails, Facebook posts, spending habits etc can tell a stranger what our age and gender is, religion, sexual orientation, whether a woman is pregnant and when she is due (being done currently by Walmart to allow for targeted marketing of customers so they can send them ads for baby stuff).


I'm still amazed at how relevant many of these texts are. We often read them thinking that we have to remember the context in which they were written or make allowances for customs and norms of the time yet so often the insights, the conflicts, the questions they are grappling with are ones we still are grappling with today. Wondering about the danger of knowledge takes us right back to where we started in September with Genesis and Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge. And here we are with Mary Shelley in 1817 worried about the dangers of untempered intellectual curiosity and here we are today still unable to come to any consensus as we play around with DNA, with weapons of mass destruction and with super computers and the Higgs Boson.

Shelley: Frankenstein

Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus; Penguin Classics, London, 2003

Mary Shelley grew up in a household composed of her father, noted rationalist philosopher and writer William Godwin, her step-sister Fanny (who was the 1st daughter of Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft and her American lover, financier Gilbert Imlay) as well as Godwin's 2nd wife and her children.  Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, had died 10 days after Mary's birth, due to complications from the birth.  According to Maurice Hindle's introduction, Mary grew up with a father who espoused the view that a "new system, based on 'universal benevolence', could create a just and virtuous society," maintaining that this virtue "would naturally emerge from the exercise of reason and free will, as developed in an 'enlightened' society."  Hindle quotes Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and writes "knowledge, and the enlargement  of intellect, are poor, when unmixed with sentiments of benevolence and sympathy...and science and abstraction will soon become cold, unless they derive new attractions from ideas of society."

Hindle mentions the Gothic imagery popular at the time Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and the use of monster imagery to demonize anything challenging the status quo.  Hindle notes that this style even permeated the writing of conservative political philosophers such as Edmund Burke, and in his introduction he includes a passage from Burke commenting on the French Revolution where he wrote that "vice assumes a new body. The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing its principle of life by the change in its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with the fresh vigour of a juvenile activity.  It walks abroad; it continues its ravages..."  Godwin himself was commonly described as a monster.  Walpole described him as 'one of the greatest monsters exhibited by history' and Burke called Godwin's opinions "pure defecated atheism...the brood of that putrid carcase the French Revolution."

Hindle ends his introduction by quoting physicist Brian Easlea in Fathering the Unthinkable who raises the issue of "Mary Shelley's indictment of masculine ambition" and her exposure of "the compulsive character of masculine science."  Hindle tells us that in her last novel, Shelley ends by having the hero say "This...is Power! Not to be strong of limb, hard of heart, ferocious and daring; but to be kind, compassionate and soft." In Frankenstein, Shelley certainly seems to want to highlight the hubris and the danger of the purely intellectual approach to science, something that still resonates today when the newspapers are full of reports of people trying to manipulate DNA to create new, "better" beings, implanting uteruii into women so that they can bear children, manipulating our environment on a scale that is truly earth-shattering and then proposing to mine the solar system for our short term benefit...  The awareness that today these reckless experiments in the name of 'science' are being driven by greed rather than by the intellectual thrill of discovery, or by a thirst for power via domination over nature, just makes mankind's hubris that much more unbearable.

The original frontispiece for Frankenstein, contains a quote from Milton's Paradise Lost.  This poem has been referenced in so many texts we've read the last couple of months that I am going to have to finally read it.  Echoes of this poem come up again and again in this text.

pg 96 "Alas...when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?"

Shelley writes alot about nature.  "When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations.  A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy." [pg 71].  The nature in Switzerland, where she and P.B. Shelley were living when she conceived of and wrote Frankenstein, contributes an enormous amount to the Gothic - as well as the elemental - feel of the book.  I couldn't help but compare her descriptions of the area around Geneva with her mother's descriptions of Denmark, Norway and Sweden when she travelled through those countries in the 1790s.  I find her writing particularly her choices of adjectives (imperial, vast, glorious, immutable and especially the overused adjective 'sublime') overwrought but I did appreciate the scenery she evokes, and the sense of place.

The abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me; a few shattered pines were scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial Nature was broken only by the brawling waves or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of the avalanche or the cracking, reverberated along the mountains, of the accumulated ice, which, through the silent working of immutable laws, was ever and anon rent and torn, as if it had been but a plaything in their hands.  These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation ...  [pg 99]

...Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding aiguilles, and it's tremendous dome overlooked the valley. [...] The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal nature bade me weep no more.  [pg 98] 

Shelley was particularly affected by her hikes around the Mer de Glace near Chamonix.

The sea, or rather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains, whose aerial summits hung over its recesses.  Their icy and glittering peaks shone in the sunlight over the clouds.  My heart, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed - 'Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life.'

I can't help but contrast this paean to the joys of life with the perspective Shelley offered some 25 pages earlier.   Frankenstein's youngest brother William is murdered by Frankenstein's nameless monstrous creation. Frankenstein's friend Henry, in an excess of exclamation points and overblown sentiment, tries to console him:

Dear lovely child, he now sleeps with his angel mother! Who that had seen him bright and joyous in his young beauty, but must weep over his untimely loss! To die so miserably; the feel the murderer's grasp!  How much more a murderer, that could destroy such radiant innocence!  Poor little fellow! one only consolation have we; his friends mourn and weep but he is at rest.  The pang is over, his sufferings are at an end forever.  A sod covers his gentle form, and he knows no pain.  He can no longer be a subject for pity; we must reserve that for his miserable survivors.

Truly a bleak outlook on life.  I'm not sure that I would have found Henry's words comforting in the face of the loss of a child.  This is always something I have never understood about many religions: the Christian religions which preach about living your life in such a way that you may ascend to heaven but regardless you will have to spend time in purgatory (and as Dante showed us in his Inferno, there was no section except the outermost part of the circles of Hell where you would want to spend even one second); the Vedic texts and Buddhist philosophy which counsel people to aim for the almost unattainable Nirvana; the Greeks describing an unattainable perfection of forms; to the Islamic texts with their promises of the companionship of pure ones in paradise.  Why should there be any sorrow or resistance to death if what comes later is what you are supposed to be aiming for, if life is just something to be endured and suffered through.  I can understand that, if day-to-day life is hard, people would dream of something better after they die but in that case, why fear it or grieve its coming?

Frankenstein is a Gothic story.  Shelley describes the scientist's dark arts; and the original concept for the story came to her in a dream when she saw the image of the pale creator bent over his awful creation.  She describes his research:

Darkness had no effect upon my fancy; and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm... I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. [pg 52-53]

Even the 'monster' says that "Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it." [pg 102] - though he had far more reason than Frankenstein himself to find life unbearable.  "So much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men." [pg 168]

Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.  I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.  Make me happy [he says to Frankenstein] and I shall again be virtuous. [pg 103]

The monster pleads a good case for the torment of his misery and, aside from his quickness to wreak revenge, he seemed to have the possibility of goodness as well as baseness within him - just as mankind does.  Yet Frankenstein, despite his initial agreement to create a companion for the monster, deems him "a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated [Frankenstein's] heart." [pg 170] I don't find the monster, other than his physical abilities, to be any more malignant, evil, depraved, barbarous etc than mankind.  The media and history books are full of people far more evil, depraved and ill-intentioned than Frankenstein's monster.  To this day.  So far civilization does not seem to have extracted or cured any of these tendencies from human nature.

At the end of the story the monster laments:

Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment.  Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.  pg 223

Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all human kind has sinned against me?  pg 224 

Society still judges people by appearance, forgiving the beautiful and engaging and condemning the ugly, the odd, the different.

Frankenstein is a good example of reason gone bad.  His scientific curiosity and his hubris took him into dangerous territory and like the scientists today who push the envelope either to see if they can or because of greed, he didn't engage his intellect to consider what the results of his actions might be, nor his humanity to care about the consequences.  Shelley seemed to want to offer a warning about the dangers of actions untempered by humanity or by those human feelings which we tend to think are desirable (compassion, fellow feeling, mercy, unselfishness, affection etc).  She has Frankenstein say:

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility.  I do not think that the  pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule.  If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. pg 56

He goes on to say that had this rule been observed Greece would not have been enslaved and the Americas would have been discovered more gradually and the existing empires (Mexico and Peru are the examples given) not destroyed.  In Frankenstein's case he allowed his reason to be a slave to his passion (which Hume has said is how it always has to be).  The consequences of reason being the slave of dark passions (greed, jealousy, hate, envy) often seem to be the most terrible.  The narrator [pg 29] notes that Frankenstein "appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion"but here he is just speaking about allowing his equanimity to be affected by despair or grief.  In the rest of the book however, Frankenstein reminds me of Werther in his self-absorption and lamentations about how his feelings are affecting him.  Page after page about his anguish, shame, guilt, despair, wretchedness, suffering, melancholy etc etc etc. Ah poor me!!

After moping around for years, worrying and depressing everyone around him, Frankenstein has the gall to say to Elizabeth, his patiently-waiting childhood companion, on their long-delayed wedding day:

You are sorrowful, my love. Ah! if you knew what I have suffered, and what I may yet endure you would endeavour to let me taste the quiet and freedom from despair that this one day at least permits me to enjoy. [pg 197]

The self-absorbed, whiny, arrogant man! His sufferings?!?  He caused the death of his youngest brother and allowed the execution of an innocent young family servant unjustly blamed for the murder.  He's kept his family and especially Elizabeth waiting and in the dark about how he is doing - and WHAT he is doing - for almost his entire adult life.  He has unleashed a monster and treated it in such a way that its only aim is to wreak revenge on Frankenstein by taking away anyone he loves (as Frankenstein has prevented the monster from having any loving companion in his life) - and he doesn't warn any of his 'loved' ones of the danger they are in because he is too afraid to own to the enormity and the consequences of his actions.  And he then has the audacity to chastise Elizabeth for being melancholy on their wedding day.

Towards the end, Frankenstein speaks to Captain Walton about reason and passion.  He asks him to "undertake [Frankenstein's] unfinished work; and I renew this request now, when I am only induced by reason and virtue. [...] I dare not ask you to do what I think right, for I may still be misled by passion.

Shelley also has the monster suffer the effects of passion:

I knew that I was preparing myself for a deadly torture; but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse, which I detested, yet could not disobey.  pg 222

Both Frankenstein and his monster allowed their passions to take over their lives and this weakness consumed their lives and laid waste to the lives of everyone around them.

At the end, Shelley imbues the monster with all the mixtures of qualities we find in mankind.

My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change, without torture such as you cannot even imagine.  [pg 222]

Shelley wrote these words in 1816 yet today we are still trying to figure it all out.  There was an article in the newspaper today reporting the results of some experiments into humans behaving in mean or bullying ways. Situations were set up with research subjects where they were told or induced to ostracize or gang up on or to make things difficult for a few other participants.  When they assessed the feelings of the people who had been bullied and compared it to the people who had done the bullying behaviours, they found that it was psychologically more traumatic for the person acting badly or meanly than for the victimized or oppressed person.

I didn't like Shelley's overwrought writing style but the situation she imagined and the themes she wove into her work still hold resonance today - and her imagery has endured and kept a firm place in people's imaginations and in our roster of bogeymen.

Discussion: Anatole France "The Gods Will Have Blood"

Stephen started the discussion off by mentioning his experience during the 60s at SFU where the revolutionary/Berkeley spirit was strong and students believed they would overthrow the old guard and change the world.  A friend of his told him that come the revolution they would have to shoot Stephen because he wouldn't be able to go as far as the extremists.  Anatole France's book "The Gods Will Have Blood" and especially the character Brotteaux spoke to Stephen and this very thrilling time in his life.

Bruce led the discussion and disagreed with Davies' suggestion that Gamelin was a modern-day terrorist.  He felt that Gamelin was an idealist, a fanatic and extremist but not someone who just wants to destroy, rather someone who believes in a new order to the exclusion of any other considerations.

Anatole France was known as a left-wing writer and he was unusual in attacking the French Revolution from the left.  Bruce spoke a little about the Dreyfus affair and France's support of Dreyfus.  He circulated the famous 'J'accuse' article by Emile Zola - an article in L'Aurore newspaper.
The Zionist movement arose from Jewish feelings about the Dreyfus affair.

Gamelin's unfinished painting of Orestes and his sister Electra was an important theme in the book and this led to a discussion about the myth, about Orestes as a symbol of a person forced to commit a sin in order to obey another duty.

Brotteaux and Longuemare, as well as Athenais, were like a Greek chorus - the voice of consience.  They don't fit in with the world of the revolution and so they are all doomed. They had a love for humanity whereas Gamelin loved France and the ideal of the Revolution but he didn't have  a love for humanity.

The rational abstracted from the real world can be dangerous - if a person (especially one with power) focuses in on theory and a structure, on laws and regulations and ignores the humanity, real evil can result.

Anatole France referred often to Rousseau in the novel - Rousseau probably represented the brutal, raw nature.  We discussed the country interlude - which was an odd break in the novel.  This was likely a bit of  critique of Rousseau who wrote about the healing effects of Nature.  France felt that you can't just go into Nature and have it change anything.  The odd character of Tronche could represent the peasantry of France and how it is used and abused by the aristocrats/intellectuals etc.

I would like to read a bit more about this time period and try to get a better understanding of the various people and the events.  It was such a dramatic upheaval in centuries of class structure and led to important changes that we are still dealing with today.

MARCUS AURELIUS: MEDITATIONS

Marcus Aurelius  Meditations , Translated by Robin Hard, Oxford World's Classics 2011



There are worse ways of spending a few days than sitting on the back deck, enjoying the Autumn sunshine and reading Mencius and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.  Both books were new to me and were a wonderful surprise.  I enjoyed Mencius but towards the end I was feeling a bit bogged down by the structured formality of the rites and courtesies as well as by the plethora of Chinese names that looked very similar to my western eyes (Chou, T-chou, Tsou, Ch’i, Chi, Ch’iu, Ch’u, Chieh, Chiao etc).  When you add in nicknames and honorifics etc, it left me quite lost.

 I really enjoyed Marcus Aurelius.  First of all, the thought that these meditations were written by the emperor of the Roman Empire, while he was fighting in Northeastern Europe to fend off the German hordes, is awe-inspiring.  He wrote as thoughtfully as the scholar-writers I’ve been reading during the previous weeks (Lucretius, Mencius, Plato).  Incredible.  I found his words very accessible and much of it still valid today – in that if you tried to follow his advice, you would probably be considered a good person, a moral person.  It was also interesting as I read through the book to see how his attitude or mood would alter in various sections.  Some of it was quite full of hope, in other sections he seemed quite down-hearted and cast down.  His words created a picture of a man who had spent his lifetime thinking about the meaning of life, how to live a moral life – and reading various philosophers and the writings of other thinkers that came before him.  It was hard to think of him as a man of action, of warfare.

 Marcus Aurelius lived from AD 121 to 180.  He was adopted by his uncle (emperor in AD 138-161).  He himself became emperor in 161, co-emperor with another adopted son, Lucius Verus until Lucius died in 169.  Marcus Aurelius died in 180.  During his lifetime he was a follower of the Stoic teachings.  Stoicism was started by Zeno and greatly expanded by Epictetus who wrote the discourses.  It was very interesting reading about the Stoic view of the world a few days after reading Lucretius, the Roman scholar-poet from the 1^st century BCE who followed the Epicurean school of thought.

The Stoics practiced 'practical ethics'.  For Marcus Aurelius this involved stripping down things to their essential reality, deciding what was really necessary, avoiding rash judgements or reactive emotions.

There were 3 branches of the teachings:

• logic (dialectic)
• physics (the study of nature)
• ethics

Marcus Aurelius covered 5 Stoic themes in his writings:

1. Living a virtuous life led to a happy life (virtue was all that was needed to ensure happiness).
2. Emotions and desires depend directly on beliefs about what is valuable or desirable.  Stoics should avoid reactive beliefs and be wary of judgements (as these may be inappropriate or misguided).  Consider priorities.
3. Humans have an inbuilt natural instinct to benefit others and all humans are capable of progressing towards the ideal state (complete virtue and happiness).
4. The natural world or Nature, has an inbuilt purpose or plan (or meaning).
5. Philosophy is a unified and systematic body of knowledge about the universe.

In much of his writings you can see a man trying to remind himself to do the right thing, to live a good life and avoid descending into pettiness or misguided emotion.  In Book 1 he describes what he has learned from various people (men) in his life:

Some of them could be written by any teenager struggling with how to grow up and become a good person.  Book 1.5.

[...] to endure hardship, and have few needs; to do these things for myself and not meddle in the affairs of others; and to turn a deaf ear to slander.

Some of them are reminders that life steadily moves on.  Book 2.4
Remember how long you have been deferring these things, and how many times you have been granted further grace by the gods, and yet have failed to make use of it.  But it is now high time that you realized what kind of universe this is [...] and that your time here is strictly limited and, unless you makes use of it to clear the fog from your mind, the moment will be gone, as you are gone, and never be yours again.

He revisits this theme in Book 10.16
No more of this talk about what a good man should be, but simply be one!

Though the Stoics are considered to be somewhat austere and not pleasure-loving (as compared to the Epicureans), Marcus Aurelius shows a slightly rosier view of life's possibilities.  In Book 5.5 he lists qualities he admires:

• disdain for sensual pleasures
• sincerity
• dignity
• endurance
• kindness
• freedom
• frugality

It's a somewhat austere list but in Book 3.2 he describes many simple daily aspects of life and the pleasure they can provide.  It reminds me of Lorna Crozier's new book "The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things" which celebrates the ordinary everyday things in our lives.  Marcus Aurelius notes many banal things and their beauty (such as the crack that develops on the crust of a loaf of bread during baking) and says:
[...] So if a person is endowed with sensibility and has a deep enough insight into the workings of the universe, he will find scarcely anything which fails to please him in some way by its presence [...]

Like the Epicureans, the Stoics felt that we should not worry about or fear death.  Similarly lusting after fame is useless as eventually no one will remember.  Aurelius spends many pages writing about death, fame, the expanse of time in which the universe exists etc.  I can't help but remember that he is writing these words towards the end of his life, and as he is facing battle and warfare daily.  He is constantly warning himself about how fleeting our time on earth is.  Aurelius counsels [himself?]  to remember (Book 4.3):
[...] that things of themselves have no hold on the mind, but stand motionless outside it, and all disturbances arise solely from the opinions within us; and secondly, that all that you presently behold will change in no time whatever and cease to exist [...]
'The universe is change, and life mere opinion.'  - Democritus No. 85

Book 4.35
All is ephemeral, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.

For Marcus Aurelius, intelligence and a sense of law were 2 qualities characteristic and universal to mankind.  Like Lucretius he feels that nothing proceeds from nothing, though where the Epicureans feel that the universe is random, the Stoics believe in Fate, in Nature's plan.
"Providence or atoms" (Book 4.3).  Marcus Aurelius frequently wrote about the fact that we don't know what Nature's plan is, what the big picture is - but Nature isn't wrong and so nothing that happens is wrong, it's all part of Nature's master plan.

LIke Mencius, Marcus Aurelius warned about being narrow-minded or having tunnel vision. 
Book 4.12
[...] be prepared to change your mind if someone is at hand to put you right and to guide you away from some ill-grounded opinion.  But this change of view must always be based on a conviction that it serves justice or the common benefit; and this or something like it should be the sole reason for your choice, rather than the impression that it would be pleasant or popular.

Book 6.21
If anyone can give me good reason to think that I am going astray in my thoughts or in my actions, I will gladly change my ways.  For I seek the truth, which has never caused harm to anyone; no, the person who is harmed is one who persists in his self-deception and ignorance.

Marcus Aurelius writes about Reason.  Book 6.23
[...] Towards irrational creatures and material things in general, act in a generous and liberal manner, because you have reason and they have none [...]

He also rejects imagination - because it leads to desire.  Book 7.17
[...] my imagination.  Go away in the name of the gods [...] for I have no need of you [...]

Book 9.7
Blot out imagination; put a curb on impulse; quench desire; ensure that your ruling centre remains under its own control.

In this he is much like Krishna in the Gita, recommending to let go of desire and of wanting. 
In Book 9.40 Marcus Aurelius gives advice on how to turn your prayers around. Don't pray for your desires to be fulfilled, pray to not have those desires, to release them, pray to not be afraid of losing things (even a child).  Pray to be released from these emotions and needs.  Importantly the Stoics advised to avoid over-valuation of non-important things (they call them 'indifferents').

He has a couple of great lines that would be wonderful to pull out in an argument:
"an abscess on the body of the universe" and a line from Epitectus "You are a little soul carrying a corpse around".  But I digress.

Reassuringly Marcus Aurelius feels that we all contain the possibility of these virtues and strengths.  Like Mencius he feels that we need to look within ourselves for the answers and solutions.
Book 10.33
[...] But mind and reason can find their way through every obstacle as their nature and will dictate.[...]

In Book 12.1 Marcus Aurelius says not to be afraid of dying but to be afraid of not living your life.  This book is full of bits wise advice and insight.  It is hard not to feel jaded about it and cynical.  The last few decades have been so full of self-help books that it is hard to read advice such as this without feeling a bit sceptical or even disparaging.  It helps to remember that this was written by a man who was leader of the Roman Empire and who had spent decades fighting battles for the survival of his empire.  This isn't Dr. Phil.

Mediations is a book I want to reread slowly and think about.