Frankenstein By Mary Shelley: Location Analysis

One of the most important facets of a story is where it is in the universe. A line spoken at a child’s birthday party has a completely different meaning in a haunted graveyard. Location provides a sense of perspective, and is absolutely essential in a novel, whether the characters are set in the southern United States or in a galaxy far, far away. It includes depth and nuances that would not be present in a different location. Mary Shelley carefully chooses the locations of the characters in Frankenstein, namely Victor, and it actively affects their emotions. The gloom of the island off the coast of Scotland, where Victor goes to create the creature’s mate, reflects perfectly the emotional turmoil that he is experiencing. His mind is in a “fog” here, one of the qualities of low places in literature that Foster mentions in his list; Victor seeks to return …show more content…
Where he finds peace and tranquility in the mountains and the lake before, he now sees that “[his] country… now, in [his] adversity, became hateful” (Shelley 179). He only desires revenge and this reflects on his environment. Upon returning to his father and the last of his loved ones subsequently dying, Victor cannot bear to stay in his homeland of tarnished beauty. He will no more return to the place where his fondest memories have their roots and sheds his surroundings as a dark insect coming out of its chrysalis. Shelley expresses through this sudden change how traumatic events can completely turn around a person’s perspective. It is like a negative photograph; the colors are completely opposite what they would be in the original image. The emotions and memories that Victor associates with his childhood home shift from kindness and love to murder and despair; this overwhelming tide of negative emotions and memories is what drives him away from