Analysis Of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

The plot of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is structured similarly to a Russian nesting doll. The book begins by telling the story of a sailor named Walton who is writing letters to his sister. These letters describe the beginning stages of Walton’s journey to the North Pole with his crew. During this journey, Walton sees a hulking creature moving across the icebergs. This creature plays a large role in the overarching narrative of Frankenstein. The story then jumps from these letters into real-time with Walton, where his crew and him spot a man stranded on an iceberg. They decide to pull him aboard and save him. This man turns out to be Victor Frankenstein. Victor tells Walton that he is in pursuit of the creature that he saw earlier in his travels, …show more content…
Victor agrees to create one as long as the creature and his mate leave him alone and never speak to him again. After this encounter, Victor and Elizabeth become engaged while Victor is still working on the creature’s mate. However, Victor decides to destroy the progress he made on the creature’s mate which angers the creature to the point where he murders Elizabeth on their wedding night. This leads Victor on a search for the creature across the world and results in him being found on an iceberg by Walton and his crew. Victor then dies from sickness and is found later by Walton with the creature standing over his lifeless body. The creature says he is going to light himself on fire in the North Pole before leaping off of the boat, concluding the plot of the …show more content…
It has elements of mystery fiction like finding clues, such as the strangle marks on Victor’s brother’s neck, indicating that the creature was the murderer. While not a true “mystery fiction” novel, Mary Shelley was a pioneer in bringing the reader to their own conclusions. For example, electricity is never mentioned as the reason the creature came to life and “one could argue that she actively omitted to name the causal agent of the animation of the creature, inviting the reader to fill in the blank” (Houe). You can see the effect this has on many golden age mystery fiction authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, where he often starts his mysteries and allows the reader to interpret the clues however they want while also simultaneously challenging the readers’ ideas with the big reveal of who actually committed the crime. Shelley achieves a very similar effect by allowing the reader to interpret what exactly brought the creature to