The Real Monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

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In this essay I will be discussing who really is portrayed as the monster in her gothic horror novel, Frankenstein or “The Modern Prometheus”. Frankenstein was written in 1816, (thought by many to be the first real science fiction novel) during the age of Romanticism and it tells the story of a selfish man, Victor Frankenstein, whose ambition conducts him to seek for supernatural powers and leads him to death. He is a young scientist, eager to discover something new, the key to life, help to make scientific advances and let other scientists get a better idea of how the body works and who after studying chemical processes and the decay of living beings, gains an insight into the creation of like, leading him to create a monster that becomes malicious, in his attempt to reach a God-like level, to see his name glorified by humanity.

However, I will be concentrating mainly on chapter five as this is the point in the novel where Victor’s scientific obsession appears to be a kind of dream but near the end we are left off with the birth of the creature. The horror of his project only strikes him when it is too late, when the creature itself, comes to life. He notices this when he realised that he was trying to take the place of God, and soon, in the shear horror, he abandons him, leaving the creature “to his own devices” and he gets no nurture, from in one point of view his father. Victor’s actions are what make up This is the most important chapter in the whole novel as this is what we have been leading up to all throughout. Also in this chapter we know that Victor is very obsessive with his work and is convinced that what he is doing will be the best for society.

Overall, you can easily tell, that this is a gothic horror novel, m...

... middle of paper ...

...any similarities as this concept still hasn’t been overcome.

Mary Shelley uses a very different kind of language techniques throughout the novel. One technique is shown straightaway right at the beginning of chapter 5 “it was on a dreary night of November”. Here Mary uses pathetic fallacy. Pathetic fallacy is the attribution of human emotions or characteristics to inanimate objects or to nature. In this case, she describes the night to be “dreary”, this tells the reader that it was a miserable night and this creates an eerie atmosphere, and the phrase “accomplishment of my toils” tells the audience that Frankenstein has a plan but we do not know what it is, and this causes tension to rise. This use of pathetic fallacy emphasizes what is about to happen, and gives us a better idea of the mood around, letting us understand what she is trying to say.

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