Frankenstein Passage Analysis

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a gothic novel that tells the story of scientist, Victor Frankenstein, and his obsession with creating human life. This leads him to creating a gruesome monster made of body-parts stolen from grave yards, whom upon discovering his hideousness, the monster seeks revenge against his creator, causing Victor to regret the creation of his monster for the rest of his life. Shelley uses the literary elements of personification, imagery, and similes to give a vivid sense and visualization of Victor Frankenstein’s thoughts and feelings as well as to allow us to delve deeper into the monster’s actions and emotions.

The passage on pages 43-44 in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein describe the events that occurred as Dr. Frankenstein brought his monster to life. She effectively uses her language and imagery to develop her tone, very dark and anguished. Her diction also helps to enforce the overall theme of the passage: don’t mess with the natural order of things.

In Frankenstein, on Victor’s way home after being away for six years, a key moment in the novel that weather sets the mood is when “It echoed from Saleve, the Juras, and the Alps of Savoy; vivid flashes of light dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake making it appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an instant, everything seemed of pitchy darkness, until the eye recovered from the preceding flash” (Shelley 50). The author, Shelley uses weather to describe the murder of his young brother, William. The weather conditions effect Victor’s mood and convey his emotional feelings of Victor as being scared, sad, or depressed. The imagery in the quote relates to the thunder thus a way to broadcast the murder of his younger brother across the land and

Mary Shelley’s purpose in her novel, Frankenstein, is to portray a desolate mood through the use of figurative language. The usage of personification mixed with imagery, “the bare trees waved their branches above me” creates a cold and lonely feel of the woods that emphasizes the creature’s struggle to be accepted in the world. It adds a sense of sorrow towards the creature as he continues to roam about with no life around him, since he is alone with the lifeless bare leafless trees. The creature then goes on to using a simile, “I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me,” which portrays a sense of self-consciousness of the evil lurking within him ready to be unleashed. The creature knew he was capable of creating havoc and destruction,

In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the idea of the natural world is recurring and helps

Throughout Frankenstein, Shelley uses Victor to warn the reader of the dangers of aspiring to godliness, and the consequences one faces in the aftermath doing so, even going as far as to compare Victor to Satan, tempting the crew of Walton’s ship, in the book’s final pages. The Victor Shelley creates is very similar to the Satan created by Milton in his book, Paradise Lost, which explores the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. In Frankenstein, Victor speaks of his desire to create the Creature, saying, “I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow-creatures.” (152). Shelley’s diction choices, such as the word “useless” exemplify Victor’s excessive hubris, portraying him as a man who creates his Creature for, in his mind, the good of society. Additionally, Shelley repeats the word “use”

Throughout Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the reader is torn between the forces of good and evil, as well as which characters represent which force. Perhaps the most masterful element of this novel is conveying how an individual can not be judged as wholly good or evil, and how having elements of both traits greatly forms the human experience. By using the motifs of light and dark to represent the positives and negatives of humanity, Mary Shelley is able to effectively convey character traits, depict transitions of good and evil within characters, and employ haunting symbolism and imagery into the novel and transform it into a literary masterpiece.

The first letter in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein reveals a variety of literary devices such as ‘theme’ that accurately foreshadows various elements from the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Victor and Walter begin by setting out for recognition and popularity, these two desires intertwine together as they go

he natural imagery in "Frankenstein" is comparable to the best in the Romantic literature. Mary Shelley paints Nature and its divine grandeur with some rare strokes of a masterful hand. She deliberately juxtaposes the exalted vision of Mother Nature with the horrendous spectacle of a man-made monster and his ghastly deeds.

Nature and Frankenstein compare in their understanding of the relationship between human beings and the natural world because the natural world is an emotional experience and the influence of nature changes the mood drastically.

Numerous research has concluded that several emotional bonds exist between humanity and nature that can impact everything from attitude to anxiety. Novels of the romanticism period, a significant literary era that encompassed most European works written in the early 1800’s, are most known for describing the impacts that nature has on people and implying that unexpected consequences can arise out of this relationship; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a prime example of such a novel. The prime conflict of this 1818 science-fiction story occurs between the titular character, Victor Frankenstein, and a monster he creates through his own scientific innovations. Because of Victor’s abandonment of the monster, it becomes intent on destroying the scientist’s

In the novel Frankenstein, the author Mary Shelley shows the everlasting power of nature by limiting the knowledge man can learn about it. Throughout the book there are many times when Victor yearns for nature in order to heal him from the misery and violence in his life. This misery and violence are caused by his determination to learn more about the natural world. The monster Victor creates, due to his loneliness, defies the unwritten rules of nature and exemplifies the supernatural aspect of the novel. Victor’s mood completely shifts when he is around nature and he instantly feels calmer when near it. The interaction between Victor and nature help to exemplify the Gothic traits in the novel.

People today are so concerned with how they can better their life by speeding up the natural process of things. Victor also wishes to see modifications in lifestyle, by creating life himself. He becomes obsessed with the idea of being a human creator of life that it leads to corruption. One of shelley’s arguments goes along with how modifying the natural process of some things can lead to monstrous actions. The life that Victor created was not able to fit into society correctly, but was also too powerful to be destroyed. The creation was so powerful in fact that Victor, its own creator, was even horrified by it. One of the questions Victor asks himself is “Had I right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations” (Shelley 220)? This is a good foreshadowing of what was to come of technology in the future. It sets the idea that technology has a long term effect on the world, and those who created it are the ones who must integrated it wisely into society. Victor reflects on the hvac the creation has caused in his life and feels guilty that “future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race” (Shelley 220). He can only imagine the further damage that the monster can do to the world, and while he wanted to

Shelly and Ishiguro both deal with the unnatural creation of life and the repercussions of ‘playing god', However, Shelley and Ishiguro have different attitudes and approaches towards this. The novels both deal with themes such as responsibility, ensoulment and what makes things morally right and wrong.

Nicole Smith praises Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ because she believes that Shelley brilliantly combines aspects of gothic literature and romanticism in order to establish distinct themes and enhance qualities of the romantic movement. By doing so, Mary Shelley separates herself from other romantic writers such as her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Smith identifies three crucial romantic themes in Frankenstein including Shelley’s use of environmental imagery for the purpose of conveying a character’s emotional state. This was seen when Victor Frankenstein contrasted his “...Barren, grey…”(Smith 2) homeland to a “...Colorful and lively.”(Smith 2) Switzerland. Another point she brought up was the symbolism of human limitation since Shelley’s