Fear, writing and twisted, does not only boil to the surface as a primal response to danger, but to the sense of terror, to loss, to loneliness, and the like. Gothic stories such as Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, aspire to unleash and elucidate these sensations. In the fashion of Romantic-era literature, this dread is shown as a ramification of excessive human ambition. To achieve this, Frankenstein shuffles the story’s chronology and employs three different voices to piece its events together, highlighting aspects of Frankenstein, the monster, and Walton, and also exposes readers not to a fear of the unknown, but to an anxiety of the human frailty that Shelley believes society too often forgets.
The premise of writing with multiple …show more content…
The emotions and toil of the character readers expect to care about is superimposed with the experiences of the monster, which draw attention to the likeness of the two troubled characters’ experiences. From this Shelley manages to draw out a sense of devastation as Victor becomes more like his creation; the monster is “alone and miserable” (133) while Frankenstein becomes a stranger to Geneva, now “hateful” (192) of it. His psychological deterioration shown in the dissolution of Victor’s character into something much darker contributes to the overall apprehension, as Victor remains sympathetic character. Here, Shelley sheds light on the consequences being too clinical and separating oneself from the roots of nature. The monster’s existence - an insult to the natural world - demonstrates its consequences in Victor, who suffers from his estrangement from the “old world.” Victor’s fate is a warning to industries and factories - once one loses touch with their land and ceases to respect it, they will become a shell of who they once were, and could be. While his life fades, Victor maintains his devotion to humanity, leading the readers to still pity him and worry if they could encounter the same destiny should also enter “[fits] of enthusiastic madness” (207), and look back to the “old world” that the Romantics wrote anthems and odes for
The premise of writing with multiple …show more content…
The emotions and toil of the character readers expect to care about is superimposed with the experiences of the monster, which draw attention to the likeness of the two troubled characters’ experiences. From this Shelley manages to draw out a sense of devastation as Victor becomes more like his creation; the monster is “alone and miserable” (133) while Frankenstein becomes a stranger to Geneva, now “hateful” (192) of it. His psychological deterioration shown in the dissolution of Victor’s character into something much darker contributes to the overall apprehension, as Victor remains sympathetic character. Here, Shelley sheds light on the consequences being too clinical and separating oneself from the roots of nature. The monster’s existence - an insult to the natural world - demonstrates its consequences in Victor, who suffers from his estrangement from the “old world.” Victor’s fate is a warning to industries and factories - once one loses touch with their land and ceases to respect it, they will become a shell of who they once were, and could be. While his life fades, Victor maintains his devotion to humanity, leading the readers to still pity him and worry if they could encounter the same destiny should also enter “[fits] of enthusiastic madness” (207), and look back to the “old world” that the Romantics wrote anthems and odes for