Frankenstein - discuss and analyse how the monster comes alive and causes torment for victor, how he changed throughout the stages of creation and how the language creates setting and atmosphere in chapter five.

Gemma Nolan

Frankenstein

The novel Frankenstein is the story of the life of Victor Frankenstein. Walton finds victor on an ice floe in the Arctic. Victor then tells him some detail about his family back in Geneva and when he was young. How he took in a young orphan called Elizabeth and brought her up as part of the family: brother and sister. As Victor grew up he became interested in science and studied at a university where he began to study in more depth and conduct experiments. When studying he believed that he found a way of bringing a human body to life – even after death. He made a human body – if that’s what it could be called, out of body parts of dead people using amniotic fluid and electricity. Once Victor had gathered his “Instruments of life” he locked himself away for two years depriving himself of sleep and food in his cell like apartment to create his human masterpiece.

I am going to discuss and analyse how the monster comes alive and causes torment for victor, how he changed throughout the stages of creation and how the language creates setting and atmosphere in chapter five

The chapter starts by describing the gothic setting: “A dreary night of November.” Weather plays a big part in the gothic atmosphere in this chapter because a dark miserable night can associate with a gothic setting as it would be dark grey clouds and black skies. A dreary night shows that it is a dark, boring and miserable night in November when the creation was finally finished. Just by one opening sentence the scene is set and the gothic feel has come alive within moments. As it is a dark night of November that Frankenstein’s monster was accomplished the weather would be awful.

For two whole years Victor locked himself away in his apartment to accomplish his creation. He deprived himself of sleep, food and the necessities of daily life. His apartment was once a nice place to stay and study in but had now become a prison cell for creation: “For this I had deprived myself of rest and health.” This contrasts with Victor’s health and the monster because as Victor’s health deteriorated, the monster was brought to life. However during the two years the weather reflected Victor’s mood as it was also miserable: “The rain which poured the black and comfortless sky.” Comfortless is the same as the room that Victor works in and black from the amount of light coming through the windows.

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Once the creation came to life, Victor was horrified by the looks of the monster: “No mortal could support the horror of that countence.” This was not what Frankenstein had expected the monster to turn out like, but at the beginning Frankenstein thought that the monster would be beautiful because he had chose all of the attractive features of different people, but Frankenstein could only see the ugliness in him: “Yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath.” Frankenstein was not a naturally made human therefore he would not look like a real human. As he was put together from dead body parts of different people, even thought they were beautiful to begin with, once they had all be put together they turned to horror. His eyes were lifeless and dead and his body was grotesque: “Watery eyes…dun white sockets…Shrivelled complexion” The monsters eyes are an off white colour which implies that it is un-natural and his shrivelled complexion was caused by the monster captivated in amniotic fluid, his “straight black lips” implied that he was dead and brought back to life. This adds to the gothic feel of it all by repeating the words black and dark throughout the chapter and again would keep the ongoing setting of a gothic night.

“How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe” Frankenstein feels a mix of horror and disgust towards the monster as he cannot believe how something he expected to be so perfect and beautiful could turn out to be his worst nightmare. “Now that I had finished the beauty of the dream had vanished”. All of Frankenstein’s hopes for the monster had been demolished by the fact of him turning out to be so ugly. This was entirely not what Frankenstein had wished for. He expected a beautiful and perfect creation that he wanted it so much it all got torn apart: his dream had become a nightmare.

Frankenstein quickly grew afraid of the monster: “listening attentively catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demonical corpse to which I had so miserably given life to: Frankenstein could not sleep in the apartment where the wretch was given life to so he franticly runs into the courtyard where he listened in fear for the sounds of the monster all night. At this moment in time Frankenstein must be going insane as thoughts would be running through his head of the monster, and why he created it, what is going to happen to him, is he going to die?

A wave of disappointment blew over Frankenstein as he realises as to what exactly he had created: “mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment.” He had created a “demonical corpse”. Frankenstein had high expectations of himself to create a believable unnatural human but with the mix of the horror that he had created, he became disappointed with his creation as it was ugly, devious and not even comparable to a creation of Dante.

At the end of this chapter we see how his creation has made him very ill: “Sleepless and aching eyes.” This shows that he has deprived himself of rest from the sheer horror of that of the monster that would come to get him; this was the first signs of his lapse of insanity. As he walked back onto the streets he paced very quickly, which shows that he was nervous, worried and scared about something that was on his mind constantly – the monster.

On the way back to his house to confront the monster, Victor’s good friend acquaints him. Frankenstein is delighted to see him: “Nothing could equal my delight on seeing Clerval; his presence brought back to my thoughts my father, Elizabeth and all those scene of home so dear to my recollection.” With the happiness of Frankenstein and all of his dearest memories that came flooding back to him so rapidly contrast to the gothic atmosphere and the hate he has for the monster. The delighting moment he had on the meeting with Clerval was the same feeling Frankenstein had when he was making the so called “beautiful” creation. However the thought of his family back at home showed his compassion and love for them all, which contrasts greatly with the horror and hate he shares with the monster once it came to life.

Victor Frankenstein played ‘God’ by creating the monster. In Christianity, God was the creator of heaven and earth, animal and humans. As victor created the monster he took on Gods role as the creator and brought life into the world. However, in the time that the novel was written this would have been immoral. In 1816-18 everybody followed the same religion and morals, going against them resulted in harsh punishments and possible death so victor was risking his own life for the creation of another.

Frankenstein then spends the next few months in captive as his illness deteriorated. Henry Clerval stopped all of his studies that he grew to love and helped Frankenstein in his time of need. His condition stayed with him for a few months. Henry kept Frankenstein’s condition secret to those he held dear to him; he never exposed the full extent of his illness but once Victor was cured from his nervous fever, he thought he ought to repay him for his troubles. Henry dismissed it.

The language in this chapter is very successful at creating the setting and atmosphere. A lot of gothic words are mentioned throughout the chapter such as: “Horror, black, scared, endeavouring, dismally and death” All these words that are used connect with the gothic theme well, such as horror links to scared and possibly death.

When Victor describes the monster the language used it very descriptive and dramatic: “Yellow Skin, straight black lips, shrivelled complexion, lustrous black.” In a gothic novel you would expect the description to be very detailed with a lot of emotion, Mary Shelly did this well when she wrote this novel. Every detail that she describes about the monster links back to the Gothic genre.

When Frankenstein reveals his emotions towards the monster, the language used is very apparent as is shows that Frankenstein went into a depressed and insane mood. This was very similar to Mary Shelly’s nervous breakdown she had when she had lost her three children and her husband’s death by drowning in 1822.

This novel reflects a lot of Mary Shelly’s life as to write the novel she was influence by the effect of the French Revolution in 1789. This led to many people resulting in being treated badly. It was said that some of those thought affected her when she wrote the story. The monster could be said to suffer from some injustices as people treat him very cruelly.

I think that this novel was very good, descriptive and in-depth novel. I think that the language in the chapter expresses the atmosphere and setting very descriptively. When the monster was created I could picture it in my head from the words used. I was not surprised when Frankenstein reacted horrifically towards the monster. Scared that he may get killed he ran away and went into an insane state of life, which is very understandable.

Word Count: 1639