Comparing and Contrasting Chapters 5 and 11-16 in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Mary Shelley wrote Frankestein when she was 18, in 1816 but it was published in 1818. Frankenstein is about a man, Victor Frankenstein, who is obsessed with science and who learns how to create life and creates a being in the likeness of man. The being is referred to as ‘the creation’ or just Frankenstein. Mary Shelley was married to Percy Bysshe Shelley who was a Romantic Poet and a great philosopher. In this essay I’ll be comparing and contrasting chapters 5 and 11 – 16 and exploring the language and structure and I will comment on Mary Shelley’s themes. Mary Shelley uses three narrators to convey her story – Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein and the being itself. She uses so many narrators to sympathise with the story and to show different aspects and each view of the story. Victor Frankenstein narrates the story in chapter 5 and is Narrator 2. In chapter 5 Victor sees his creation come to life. At first, Victor thinks that his idea worked. But then, he is horrified that he created this monster and so he runs away. His friend, Henry Clerval, takes care of him when he becomes sick and has a fever for months.

In chapter 5, Victor Frankenstein is the narrator and Victor is very obsessed with his creation and the science. He doesn’t eat, sleep or talk to anyone for days and the monster now begins to take shape, and Victor describes his creation in full detail as ‘beautiful yet repulsive’ with his ‘yellow skin’, ‘lustrous black, and flowing’ hair, and teeth of ‘pearly whiteness.’ Victor describes the monster's eyes, considered the windows upon the soul, as ‘watery eyes, that seemed almost the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion a...

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..., benevolent etc just so the family can be happy. In the novel, Mary Shelley includes this to show readers that not all people that look as if they are a bad person, turn out to be bad. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley displays revenge. She does this by making the being turn its back against his creator, Victor Frankenstein. Victor is traumatised with the guilty knowledge that the monster he has created is responsible for the death of two loved ones, William, his younger brother and Justine Moritz, a girl who had been adopted by the Frankenstein household. The monster kills Elizabeth, Victor’s wife, on their wedding day. This is because the monster begged Victor to create a female friend for him but Victor destroyed it when he remembered what a danger they both could have been to themselves and to everyone around them.