Analysis of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Analyzing a book can be a killer. Especially when it contains tons of subtle little messages and hints that are not picked up unless one really dissects the material. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a prime example. It is analyzed by scholars all the time because of the subtle messages it sends through its themes, one of which needs to be discussed that is called Romanticism. Romanticism dealt with simplifying things as a break from the previous age which deal with grandeur. Romantics highly valued nature as well as isolation for salvation and healing. Frankenstein has all of these elements but some are more muted than others. There are also subtle nods to other works or the Romantic era throughout the book. However, let's start with obvious examples of Romanticism. Romanticism deals a lot with elements and how they affect human beings. In the very beginning of the story, Captain Walton finds Victor nearly dead after his ship is stuck in a sea of ice, where he says, "...and we beheld, stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end." (12). Ice symbolizes death and pain or illness in Romantic novels. This shows there is no coincidence in Victor's state of being and the environment they are in at the time. This is also one of those subtle nods towards former works Shelley had read. For anyone who has read "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (another Romantic work), his ship was stuck in a sea of ice as well. This theme of nature directly affecting, displaying, and sometimes even predicting, things that will happen in the novel is very much the Romantic style. We still use nature as symbols all the time as well. Fung Shua deals ... ... middle of paper ... ...sun, heaven and hell, and good and evil. The Creature and Victor through out the story are perfect dual characters that mirror each other. Victor is stripped of all his loved ones by the Creature and the Creature loses his loved ones (the cottagers). They are also thought of as evil but have good intentions at heart. Romantic examples flood this novel and make it intriguing for scholars even today because of its remarkable ability to give subtle nods to things that strike our inner most emotions. Mary Shelley managed to take our sympathy and pour it onto the Creature and tell the story in a truly Romantic fashion. Works Cited Almeida, Hermione. "Preface: Romanticism and the Science of Life" Spring 2004. Vol 43 Issue 1 pg 1-4 Rajan, Tilottama. "The Prose of the World: Romanticism" Dec 2006 Vol 67 Issue 4 Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein Pearson Education Inc 2007
Shelley juxtaposes the physical deterioration of Victor into the ugly appearance of the creation to prove that time
Shelley 94). Victor’s various thoughts of rage and hatred that had at first deprive him of utterance, but he recovers only to overwhelm the creature with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt, as he recalled creature’s misdoings to his loved ones. However, Victor pauses to “conceive,” to “feel,” and to “reason” with monster (M. Shelley 94). As Victor follows his creation, he notices the “air [to be full] of exultation” and “the rain” beginning “to descend,” showcasing Victor’s consent to change his view. (M. Shelley 98). Chapter 10 is exemplary of the Romantic Period where story becomes an allegory for real emotions and struggles. Victor’s
When victor brings the monster to life he soon realises that he has made a big mistake because he says ‘What have I done?’ this tells us that Victor has pride in his work at first but then it quickly turns to disbelief then he becomes terrified he leaves the monster and goes to his home in Geneva. The monster soon realises that he has been abandoned (I think that Mary has put in her novel him getting abandoned because her father abandoned her because he didn’t like the person who she was going to get married to) so he sets of to see what the world has to offer. As the monster comes across a village that has just been outrun with a deadly disease called colleria so when the villages see him they think that he brought it in and they beat. He turns to find Victor and make him pay for bring him back ugly. The monster finds a place to hide from all the people and he helps out a family by helping them with their farm work and he learns to read and write. In the family there is a blind man the monster is very protective over the blind man and the man come for the tax on the house where they live and he beats the blind man up but then the monster beats up the tax man and the little girl with the blind man screams and the mum and dad hears meanwhile the blind man and the monster
Within the book Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, there are many moments of tragedy and loss, as well as certain moments where joy and love are present. A number of these scenes contain a connection to nature. Since the Romantics viewed Nature as a source of emotional experience and spiritual renewal. However Mary Shelley was not solely a Romantic, she also took literary cues from the Gothic tradition as well. This second impetus also stressed the importance of nature, especially the darker aspects of it. Particularly the rageful and turbulent characteristics of nature, this manner of guiding the emotions using nature is very obvious and abundant in Frankenstein.
From the very opening of the novel, there is an introduction of a character and his relation to nature, in this case, Robert Walton as he depicts the grandeur of nature through his letters sent to her sister while setting out on his adventure to the North pole; “There, Margaret, the sun is forever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour” (Shelley 10). Through this description, it is evident that Romantic elements are being portrayed through Frankenstein since the love and emotion for nature is emphasized repeatedly. Moreover, Romantic literature regards emotion and imagination as more important entities than reason and formal rules. This characteristic is exemplified throughout the novel and is the main cause of the scientist’s invention which is caused due to his curious nature rather than rational thoughts. Generally, The Romantic Movement was established in the late 18th century by artists across Europe. The concept of Romanticism is that rationality doesn’t provide an explanation to everything. Thus, Romantics were known for their irrational thoughts and deep emotions unlike the Enlightenment Age, where rationality, collective thoughts, science and deductive reason were heavily focused on which eventually led to the birth of the Industrial Revolution (Hug 17 Mar. 2014). Many writers embraced the ideology of Romanticism and often incorporated several characteristics throughout their texts, for instance, Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein. The novel regards a young curious scientist residing in Switzerland named, Victor Frankenstein. Being an inquiring individual, he shifts to the University of Ingolstadt where he develops an interest in alchemy and chemistry. Expanding his knowledge a...
His aspirations and ultimate “failure” are what brand his character the romantic hero of the novel. An excerpt from the novel highlights Dr. Frankenstein’s conflict with the ambition of the romantic hero. The beginning of the passage is primarily introducing Victor’s ultimate goal of discovering a way to overcome the devastating and previously unstoppable force of death. He goes on to explain that he became obsessed with the concept of completing this goal: “.I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.” He notes that his desire for the attainment of this knowledge became so extreme that it overshadowed his concern for his own personal well-being: “My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement.”
The monster feels alienated in the novel, as he goes on a search for his creator and along the way he develops not only from his own findings with the DeLacy family, but he finds letters that Victor had written and gets a glimpse of what he is really like and what his feelings were towards his creation.
The vivid, dark imagery of the monster’s creation is used to emphasize Victor’s emotional and intellectual motherhood. This false maternity sets the stage for the future personification of the monster as a child. For instance, while Victor creates his creature, he is utterly consumed. "The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul,
Mary Shelley and James Whale address the advantages of communication throughout Frankenstein using differing approaches. The characterization of the creature in Shelley and Whale’s pieces demonstrates the principal effect of incompetent verbal expression through his inability to form relationships. In Whale’s 1931 film Frankenstein, he removes the humanistic qualities of the creature by enabling his speech, highlighting the complexity of the character Shelley provides. Without vocal recognition, deciphering the creature’s intentions results in a misinterpretation of violence, resulting in conclusions being made based off of his actions rather than what he attempts to communicate verbally. Providing verbal abilities in Shelley’s text shows
“The Romantic idealism of Shelley and his overreaching heroes, was like all idealism, based on a faith in man’s or more correctly “men’s” “divine” or creative powers. It’s Mary Shelley’s critique of where such powers can lead when put in a scientific context and then driven long by “lofty” ambition and high destiny that we see in Frankenstein.” Many of the main ideas behind the literary movement of Romanticism can be seen in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Mary Shelley was deeply influenced by the romantics, and the reader of Frankenstein can identify a number of characteristics of romanticism in this novel. The romantic period was characterized by a marked departure from the ideas and techniques of the literary period that preceded it.
Shelley was the daughter of Wollstonecraft, the Enlightenment Philosopher that was briefly examined a few paragraphs prior. In this novel, a very young but very intelligent scientist, Victor, creator a form of human being, the Monster. After the creation of the Monster, Victor becomes very sick in his stomach in regards to his creation. The Monster is very empathetic and loving by nature. He has ambitions of a companion. The Monster expresses his ambitions to Victor. Victor does not comply with the Monsters request for a companion. This is the turning point for the Monster. This is very compelling because this novel attributes traits and paradigms from both sides of the scale, Enlightenment and Romanticism. This is relevant because Victor is very much an Enlightened thinking man. He is educated and a scientist. He seems to think that science can cure the world's ailments. On the contrary, the Monster is very much a Romantic. He reads poetry. His ambitions are typically emotional. He enjoys nature and is emotional in his decisions. The clash of these two ideologies resulted in the death of Victor’s new bride and the death of the Monster. Ironically, if Victor, Enlightenment, and the Monster, Romanticism, would have acted in corraboration maybe something beautiful could have been created. This novel is a hybrid of these two
The grotesque appearance of the monster causes characters in the novel to believe he is evil and corrupt, however, if they had spoken to the monster they would realize he originally had a kind heart and good intentions. When the monster saw a young girl drowning in a lake he was passing by, he saved her,
Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein and Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” are both accredited works exhibiting the romanticism style. Shelley’s Frankenstein is a renowned tale of a scientist named Victor Frankenstein. Victor’s desperate need for fame and glory leads him to create life out of dead matter in the form of a hideous creature. Victor and the creature’s relationship sends him into a terrible ruin and has everlasting effects on his life and the lives of those around him. In comparison, in Coleridge’s poem, the Mariner tells his tale to guests at a wedding of when he, set out at sea, took advantage of a good omen and killed an innocent Albatross. The sequential events
The Romantic Movement in England, and subsequently in America, occurred in the late 18th to the early 19th centuries. In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley conforms to many literary trends that were used by the romantics. One literary trend of the romantic era is for the story to be set in a very remote or foreign place. Possibly, the purpose of having a story set in a foreign place was to create a realm that is entirely different from the known world of the reader. After all, for a monster in an apartment in the middle of London would hardly have been believable. Above all, the Romantic writer's objective was to create new and/or different worlds so that their readers would concentrate wholly on unusual themes and ideas. In the novel Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, the main character, has to deal with the death of his mother during a time in his life when he is ready to set out for college. The death of Victor's mother has negative consequences on his life. When Victor leaves to attend college he no longer has his mother with him and is cut off of almost all relations with females. This misfortune led to the creation of his monster.
Although this novel strongly represents Romantic literature, I see a connection to the earlier Renaissance era in the form of scientific expansion and individualism. Frankenstein was focused on his sole purpose in the scientific development of creating a human (Shelley, 1818). Current Relevance While reading this novel I could not help but think how the creature's revenge parallels modern day mass shootings, followed by suicide of the shooter. How often do we hear the shooter was a tortured soul?