How does The Monster in the book Frankenstein use fire to compensate for its loneliness and isolation? Sigmund Freud famously said “Unexpressed emotions never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways”. In the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley an ambitious scientist by the name of Frankenstein imbues life into a corpse but after realizing the horror he has created he leaves the corpse to fend for its own. The Monster as the corpse has been called, struggles with loneliness as everyone is much too abhorred by it. As a result The Monster takes revenge on Frankenstein by killing everyone Frankenstein loves, to pain Frankenstein as The Monster has been. I will be using Psychoanalysis which is the practice of analyzing …show more content…
After The Monster had found and attached itself to a family to cope with its loneliness The Monster had attempted to interact with the family only to have them reject him in horror. The family; so terrified of The Monster, had sold their cottage and fled, leaving The Monster to become so filled with rage it burnt down the cottage the family had lived in. “...they had spurned me and deserted me, anger returned, a rage of anger, and unable to injure anything human, I turned my fury towards inanimate objects… I fired the straw,and heath, and bushes, which I had collected. The wind fanned the fire,and the cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames” (Shelley 149). The subconscious connection of warmth and loneliness is only furthered by the burning of the cottage. The cottage for a time was the warmth The Monster was craving and after the villagers left The Monster had nothing to fill the void. Using fire The Monster was able to fill the void and take out its revenge on those who had left. The burning of the cottage is the change from bliss to ignorance in The Monsters mind. In the case of death The Monster still has a mental connection to …show more content…
After killing everyone important from Frankenstein's life The Monster drags Frankenstein into the arctic. When Frankenstein's own life gets taken by the cold of the arctic The Monster vows to end its own life in a fiery blaze on a funeral pyre which is a device to kill someone through burning. The Monster swims away through the cold arctic water when Frankenstein's life was taken to never be seen again. “I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pyre triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames…my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace…” (Shelley 241). While The Monster could have easily ended its life in the freezing water of the arctic and died in the cold like its creator. Instead The Monster decided to end its life through burning. The Monsters subconscious had decided that as it had spent its whole life alone it needed to end its life with warmth. The Monster had dragged Frankenstein out into the arctic so Frankenstein would die cold and alone unlike how The Monster had spent its whole life. The start of Frankensteins life was filled with warmth and people whereas The Monsters was full of cold and loneliness so to have Frankenstein's life ended by the cold The Monster wants to end its life full of warmth to end the misery comfortably.