Shelly Jackson’s Patchwork Girl is a remediation of Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein. Through the medium of hypertext Jackson modernizes the story of Frankenstein crafting it into a version she can call her own.
Patchwork Girl is very different from the text most people are accustom to, and at first can leave the reader in utter confusion. With that said though, if we look deep into the structure of a hypertext it is clear that hypertext in fact helps the reader piece the ideas of the author in a much more efficient way than that of a book. This structure allows the reader to jump from section to section in any order they please, for its sections are not organized by sequence but by relativity. This supplies the reader with a better understanding of the authors ideas because each point is made clear in one specific section which is supported by smaller subsections. In addition, these section for the most part are small, and the process of clicking each section one by one acts a digital speed bump, slowing the reader down for a closer reading of the text.
An important question to think about is will hypertext become the “book” of our age? The answer to the question is unknown for now, but it seems it could go either way. Hypertext appears to be the more efficient way for an author to get their point across. The problem with hypertext is that it lacks the ability to form a climax. The fact that there is no specific order in which the reader has to read makes it impossible for there to be a climax. This poses a fairly large problem, how can the reader stay interested in the story if there is no real emotional build up? Can it even be defined as a story if there is no climax? And do we define the structure of a story as beginning, middle, and end?
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