The Effective Use Of Language In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Frankenstein is a book that tells the sad story of a bright scientist who makes a breakthrough in his field of biology and biochemistry. He creates a being from nothing but found parts that is endowed with superhuman strength, speed, size. It gained a need to be accepted into a very superficial society of early Switzerland; forcing it into the alps, away from humanity, and into the waiting hands of cruel fate. The combination of revulsion toward the creature and pity for its sensitive nature causes an internal struggle for the reader as well as, to some extent, the creature. In this story that has become a classic, Mary Shelley paints a dark and yet tense picture using nothing but words, keeping the tension of doubt and pity stirred up. This gives us a tentative glimpse into Victor’s

The use of such passionate words and clever placement of italics allows Shelley to portray sheer hatred in two sentences; “Nothing in human shape could have destroyed that fair child. He was the murderer!” (Shelley 63). In this excerpt the use of such charged words mean the difference between anger and indifference. For instance, this is the same passage with some words changed: ‘Nothing human could have killed that kid. He was the killer!’ Just changing a few words can make all the difference here, and Shelley hits the mood right on the nose. The theme that Shelley designs is the moral question, ‘is it right for man to play God?’ No more does she emphasize this than at the moment Victor considers the magnitude of his actions in this passage on page 64; “I considered the being whom I had cast among mankind and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror…” (Shelley 64) She utilizes Victor’s bubbling cauldron of raw emotion to give this description of how nothing man creates is good by nature, but can easily turn to evil without conscious guilt on the