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Use of tone as literary device
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Well known novelist and writer, Mary Shelley, in her novel, Frankenstein, uses tone, imagery, theme in a very influential way. She puts these writing tools in strategic spots to help the reader visualize and connect to the story better. Keeping these tools in mind, we will analyze the passage where Victor brought life into his creation, changing his life forever. Throughout this passage, the dreary tone weighs heavily on the reader. “With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet” (p. 43 Shelley). In this quote the words agony, lifeless, and anxiety help the reader pull raw feelings to better understand Victor before his creation came to life. After this raw emotion, there's a shift as it moves into an excited anxious tone using beautiful and lustrous. The feelings quickly shift back into a dreary state as Victor runs into hiding from his creation. When Mary Shelley uses imagery it helps to foreshadow what Victor is going through. “Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I …show more content…
Family is who you start your life with, they create the foundation of who you are and influence who you will become. Victor’s abandonment left his creation with no leading influence. This pushes the monster to fall into patterns of tragedy, murder and despair. “He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs” (p. 44 Shelley). We can infer that his creation was only trying to reach out to the only family he would ever know. Victor escaping at only the sight of his creation was bound to have a harsh effect. You can only imagine what his creation went through trying to understand the brand new world he was brought into, relationships with other living beings and walking the path of self discovery alone; Leading him to to a life of
Similarly, the writer Brackett explains, “At times, Victor’s actions suggest that the id has overpowered him as, earlier in Chapter 23, he notes that he doesn’t know what happened . . . ‘I lost sensation, and chains and darkness were the only objects that pressed on me’ … Victor’s id, his subconscious desires, have overcome his ego, the more rational aspect of his character” (Brackett). Brackett notices the change in Victor’s character. This means that Shelley understands the way our attitudes change rapidly, sometimes for the
did not watch the blossom.” Shelley illustrates to the reader how beautiful the “blossom” of the flowers are and how much Victor is missing out of by dedicating all of his time to making the “monster”. This is one factor of Victor’s suffering and depression, the act of missing out on the true meanings of life. Shelley wanted to make this a very personal matter to the reader and Victor because most people have a personal connection to seeing the flowers bloom in spring, which then lets the reader connect their own experience and back with Victors. Shelley also uses that same “blossom” reference as a symbol for Victor’s own intellectual blooming and expanding just as the flowers are expanding his horizon. Even though Victor “did not watch the blossom,” this gave him more time to “succeeded” with his making of the “monster”. There is an evident change in Victor's passion to create the “monster” when Victor says, “enthusiasm was check by my anxiety.” Here, Victors animal instinct of sensing fear is present. He knows that making life artificially is very risky and it gives him “anxiety” even though his intentions were originally pure and out of the passion for science. He subconsciously (instinctively) knows that
When Victor died, the monster wept over his body. “‘But soon,’ he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, ‘I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct,’” (277). This quote from the monster exhibits the void he felt after Victor died. The realization that his creator is dead becomes too much to bear for him, so he proclaims that he will die. This is symbolic to Mary Shelley’s real life.
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
Mary Shelly’s purpose in this excerpt is to convey a sorrowful tone through the use of figurative language that exemplifies that anguish that Victor Frankenstein and Elizabeth feel after the conviction of Justine. Shelly describes Elizabeth’s innocent nature during her mourning with the use of simile that details her demeanor to be “like a cloud” that transverses the moon without altering its brightness. This simile adds to the tone because Elizabeth’s sorrow masks her usual radiant appearance. Through the use of personification, Frankenstein’s emotions were “penetrated” by “anguish and despair.” Shelly characterizes Frankenstein as being depressed by providing a description of how negative feelings overpowering all other emotions. The influx
Through the theme of birth and creation, Shelley criticises Victor not only for creating the new being, but also for abandoning it when it comes to life. Victor first wishes to create the being because he thinks:
Mellor made point of this and elaborated on this subject in her essay but I will add on to her claims. Victor, one who lost sight of his family, friends, and moral values, eventually came to a standstill in his life where he devoted everything to hunting and killing the monster he had created. The loss of family is one of the key factors to his downfall. Even though Victor casts away his family standards later in his life, his childhood was quite pleasant and enjoyable. He says, “No youth could have passed more happily than mine” (50). Victor feels great sadness when the revenge the monster had spoken of was taken out on his newly wed wife. He loses his own new family on his wedding night and speaks, “But, as if possessed of magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real intentions; and when I thought that I had prepared only my own death, I hastened that of a far dearer victim” (361). The value of family is or was important to Victor and to many of the characters in the story. It is a principle that should be highly treasured by everything everywhere yet Victor abandons it for the pursuit of his
Mary Shelley, with her brilliant tale of mankind's obsession with two opposing forces: creation and science, continues to draw readers with Frankenstein's many meanings and effect on society. Frankenstein has had a major influence across literature and pop culture and was one of the major contributors to a completely new genre of horror. Frankenstein is most famous for being arguably considered the first fully-realized science fiction novel. In Frankenstein, some of the main concepts behind the literary movement of Romanticism can be found. Mary Shelley was a colleague of many Romantic poets such as her husband Percy Shelley, and their friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, even though the themes within Frankenstein are darker than their brighter subjects and poems. Still, she was very influenced by Romantics and the Romantic Period, and readers can find many examples of Romanticism in this book. Some people actually argue that Frankenstein “initiates a rethinking of romantic rhetoric”1, or is a more cultured novel than the writings of other Romantics. Shelley questions and interacts with the classic Romantic tropes, causing this rethink of a novel that goes deeper into societal history than it appears. For example, the introduction of Gothic ideas to Frankenstein challenges the typical stereotyped assumptions of Romanticism, giving new meaning and context to the novel. Mary Shelley challenges Romanticism by highlighting certain aspects of the movement while questioning and interacting with the Romantic movement through her writing.
His later murder is part of his promise to ruin Victor's life even further. When Victor disagrees to make the monster a companion to live with the monster warns him that he will be there on his wedding night. At this point the monster has become that of a reckless and vengeful son. Poorly raised the monster has become haphazardous to anyone he comes in contact with. He doesn’t fully comprehend right from wrong which explains his reason for murder and burning down the house of the De Lacey family. It was the responsibility of Victor to educate the monster, similar to the responsibility of a parent to educate and install common sense of right from wrong in their child. Unfortunately the chance for that is far past and now Victor must pay the price.
One of the most clear and compelling character parallels that Victor and the creature share is their loneliness and their isolation. When the creature observed De Lacey and his family in in a remote German village, he shadowed their behaviors and he began to master the basic ways of life; he learned of their emotions, their culture, and their history. Like a growing child, his mind was constantly saturated with new ideas, his thoughts twirling around the ways of human nature. Although heavily intrigued by their family and values, the creature ponders and says, “Increase knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was” (Shelley, page 133). Progressively, the creature transforms into a slave to everything he learns. Like a child metamorphosing into adolescence, he begins to stray from his innocence and purity, discarding his once-naive ways of thought. This torture he feels, helps him alert Victor, sending him subtle warnings of what his life might become if he follows a certain path. Alone, he says, “I was dependent on none and related to none. The path of my departure was free, and there was none to lament my annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them” (15.5). Without
After he destroys the mate he was creating for his monster, Victor declares, “Devil, cease; and do not poison the air with these sounds of malice. I have declared my resolution to you, and I am no coward to bend beneath words” (Shelley 158). Here, Victor takes his independence a step further and denies two obligations: the obligation to fulfill the promise he made, and his fatherly obligation to the being he created. Addition, this time when Victor denies his obligations, he does it not out of addiction to his work or disgust at his creation, but through his new-found bravery. Thus, Victor also falls in line with Emerson’s discussion of a true scholar being brave, “for fear is a thing which a scholar by his very function puts behind him” (Emerson 1146). However, Shelley interestingly ties the ideas of a scholar being free and brave together by having Victor’s bravery arise out of his desire to be free. Victor maintains, “I am no coward to bend beneath words” (Shelley 158); however, it was the creature’s words -- his skillful use of ethos, pathos, and logos -- that caused Victor to agree to his terms in the first place. Thus, here Victor does not “bend beneath words” not because he is brave but because his desire to be free outweighs his fear of the creature. Shelley proposes that the bravery of the scholar comes not from his ability to but fear behind him for the good of learning, as Emerson suggests, but rather bravery comes from his crude obsession with his own freedom. Shelley shows that this refusal of obligation puts the nail in Victor’s coffin: the breaking of this promise causes the creature to murder first his best friend and then his wife. After this tragedy occurs, Victor describes, “Liberty, however,
Victor’s character, along with the other male characters in the story, is described in detail as opposed to the women in the novel. When Victor’s best friend Henry dies, the readers feel sympathy toward Victor. They knew how close Victor and Henry were. When Elizabeth gets murdered, that connection with Victor is not there. Throughout the novel there is never a real connection between Victor and Elizabeth that’s stated. Elizabeth and the other female characters are there to just reflect the men in the novel. Johanna Smith states in her critical essay, "Women function not in their own right but rather as signals of and conduits for men's relations with other men" (Smith 283). One example of men using women for their fights is when the monster kills Elizabeth on their wedding night. The monster kills Elizabeth not because he’s angry with her, but because he is upset with Victor. Women in this novel are just used by the men. Elizabeth is used to measure the relationship between the monster and Victor. Diane Hoeveler argues, “Victor's inability to allow the female creature to live is, for feminist critics, more than narcissism; it is another instance of the misogyny and fear of female sexuality that Shelley exposes and condemns” (Hoeveler 46). The monster asks Victor to create a female companion for him. Victor first
Shelley’s use of contrast in diction, imagery, monologue, and allusion showed Victor’s unfair judgement of Creature when he was
In his own words, Victor, who was always “surrounded by amiable companions…[was] now alone” (25). Despite knowing that he would isolate himself, Victor chooses to leave and immerse himself in his studies anyway. Consequently, months pass, and he becomes increasingly obsessed with creating life, owing to the loss of his mother. Victor finds himself sick and anxious after slaving away endlessly, describing himself as a “wreck” and “oppressed by fever” (35). This first instance of the motif portrays the theme that isolation has its ramifications. Due to his choice to isolate himself, Victor’s health begins to decline, as does his concern for his own well-being and mental state. Victor is consumed by his obsession, and there is no one there to care, so he does not care either. In this situation, Shelley exemplifies what a person becomes when they are alone for too
The death of loved ones and the rejection and abandonment include the horrible element into the work. These things are often seen by people as being the most horrible things that could happen in their life. Victor experiences the loss of family and friends in the work as he loses his mother, William, Justine, Henry, Elizabeth, and his father. This loss of loved ones is likely inspired by the loss Shelley experienced in her life. For example, a biography of Shelley explains, “When Percy Shelley drowned in a storm off the Italian coast, Mary was left a widow. She was all of twenty-five. She had given birth four times; only one child lived past babyhood” (Nichols 7). The story shows rejection and abandonment seen when Victor gives up on his creation and leaves his monster to fend for