Analysis of the Creation Scene from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 Film Version

Analysis of the Creation Scene from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 Film Version

One of the key themes in Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ is human

arrogance. Frankenstein’s curiosity leads him to play the role of God.

In a way Frankenstein is responsible for the monster and has

ultimately become a father figure to the monster. Frankenstein

abandoning the monster leads up to it turning evil and looking for

revenge. Therefore, parenting is another theme in the novel. The

nature of beauty is another theme. Frankenstein abandons the monster

because he did not turn out as good looking as he had intended. The

best features were chosen to make Frankenstein’s monster but

ironically the monster turned out ugly.

The ‘creation scene’ is presented in a typically ‘Gothic’ way and

Shelly exploits the gothic traditions that had already, to some

extent, been established in 1818. Her setting is classic of the genre

as her setting is very hellish. The candles, coffins and dreary night

are commonly used for this genre. Her use of archaic language gives us

the classic gothic feeling. Language like “demonical corpse”,

“convulsed” “grave-worms”. The archaic language is also a good use of

graphic imagery, which again is classically used in this type of

genre. Shelley also uses hyperbolic language. She seems to over

exaggerate a lot of things in this scene. For example, she uses

repetition and exclamation marks to show how shocked Frankenstein was

when he first saw the monster: “beautiful. Beautiful! - Great God!”.

The capital letters also show us the shock. Frankenstein is over

reacting.

Shelley uses false collocations to contra...

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...ence. A lot of the things in the movie are

altered like this to make things more exciting. For example, in the

novel there is no storm, it just raining lightly and it set just

before daybreak. However, in the movie there is a massive storm and

the scene is set at midnight.

In conclusion, I feel that Kenneth Branagh did not do a very good job

of making an exact film version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Branagh has done the same thing to the novel that many of the other

Hollywood films based on the novel have done. Branagh has altered

important aspects of the novel to suit a modern audience. It is

because of these alterations in modern film versions that many people

that have not read the original novel think that the monster is

actually called Frankenstein when really Frankenstein is the creator

of the monster.