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Frankenstein Rhetorical Analysis Essay

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All humans find themselves obsessively determined to succeed in gaining something, whether it be knowledge, a promotion, or someone’s love, only to find out that what they thought they were going to get is not what they actually wanted at all. In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley describes this phenomena occurring within Victor Frankenstein’s internal narrative. He is obsessed and determined to discover the secret of life, and once he does he realizes its effects on not only his life, but others’ as well. Throughout the passage found on pages 30-31, Mary Shelley reveals the attitudes of curiosity, wonder, and determination through descriptive characterization of Victor Frankenstein and his thoughts, effectively bringing her own attitudes to fruition through language, symbols, and sentence structure. Shelley portrays Victor in contemplation of his curiosity towards the wonders …show more content…

Shelley wrote the scene of his discovery in a single sentence that takes up the space of one regular sized paragraph coupled with a rhetorical question to emphasize the lengths that Victor went through to finally reach his glorifying moment of enlightenment and to question what he is striving for. To further elaborate on Victor’s journey to his discovery, Shelley juxtaposes his childhood education to his current endeavors that follow a completely opposite path; “In my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition, or to have feared the apparition of a spirit.” The juxtaposition enhances the contrast of the ideas Victor was raised upon, and the ideas he holds deep within himself during the present. Victor’s unconforming ideas and predilection for the mysterious reveal Shelley’s background in Romanticism and the effects that the era holds on her

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