Chapter five is very significant and turning point to the novel as a whole because it is the part where the monster is finally completed. In creating life the reader will think that the remainder of the chapter or even the novel will be ended of in a pleasant mood. But as we read on we find out that the atmosphere becomes very horrid using extremely dark words. After the creature has been brought to life Victor Frankenstein notices that the monster was not what he had planned and has wasted two years in creating a “beast”. In Frankenstein’s opinion he thought that the monster will be beautiful because he has handpicked all the perfect body parts of corpses but in reality the monster was hideous because it had “yellow skin with black lustrous hair flowing…and horrid watery eyes”. In Victor Frankenstein’s point of view “the beauty of the dream had vanished and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart”. When Victor creates the monster he runs away from his laboratory and collapses in his room and has a nightmare of Elizabeth turning into his mother’s dead body. The nightmare may have shown guilt of him neglecting his family. When he woke up from his nightmare to see the monster and he ran away out to the city. From this chapter the creation has been given no name and has been known as “the monster” through people’s eyes.
In this novel Frankenstein there are a number of themes that the main ones are birth and creation, the role of mother and dangerous knowledge. The theme birth and creation is meant that Victor Frankenstein takes over the role and old and role of god by creating a living creature. The religious people at that time and the people reading the novel will think that Victor Frankenstein has committed an unforgivable sin because he has replaced the role of god. One of the reasons Mary Shelley wrote this novel is to warn people to stop creating things otherwise the same thing will happen and the creation will cause dilemma like Frankenstein.
There are three narrators in the novel Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein and the monster. Mary Shelley uses framing device and epistolary to narrate the novel. Framing device is narrated through a story when told through someone who reads it or listen to it. Epistolary narration is told by someone reading a piece of text example a magazine and mostly a letter. Robert Walton is one of the narrators in the novel Frankenstein; he is a self educated explorer his main objective is to reach the North Pole. When he meets Victor Frankenstein and listens to his stories he narrates it indirectly through letters about Victor’s stories which he writes to his sister. The second narrator is Victor Frankenstein who narrates the novel by telling the story to Robert Walton. The third narrator is the monster who interrupts Victor’s narration and we get his side of the story and his desires of having a partner.
As the reader goes more in depth in chapter five they will notice that Victor Frankenstein is very confused because he is unable to express his emotion to its own creation. The reader will notice that after the monster is created the novel becomes darker because the surroundings become “dreary”, “dismally” and “horrid” which created a sense of foreboding and the final outcome was the death of Victor Frankenstein’s wife.
At the start of the play some people may mistaken that Robert Walton is the main character. It is only after he rescues a traveller and the traveller tells Robert about his past experiences and the reader is introduced to the real protagonist of the novel. Victor Frankenstein comes from a wealthy and loving family which he later pays no attention to due to his studies and his theory in creating life. Victor Frankenstein is extremely clever but very stubborn and self centred and tries to use his knowledge to create life and give life to the dead. Due to Victor’s stubbornness he could of prevented the death of his family member and also his own. Before Victor’s death he says that he does not regret making the monster and his lack of guilt, being stubborn and being self centred makes us wonder if he really is the monster in this play.
The monster is of good character because he helps a family harvest their crops and also he prevents a girl from drowning. Although Victor Frankenstein hand picks the monsters good features they still contradict each other because he has yellow skin and black lips which means that it is dead skin and he has pearly white teeth. When the monster is created it looks hideous so many people get scared of the monster and mistreat it, due to the mistreatment the monster havoc and death to Victor Frankenstein’s and his friends and family. Unlike Victor the monster owns up and understands that he has caused trouble.
In my opinion Frankenstein is a fantastic novel because it shows that even though something looks bad from the outside it my have good internally. This also deals with every day lives because people create things for example war or experiments and go on doing it with everyone’s disagreement and when it turns out bad they are careless and they expect other people to fix the problem. Some critics say that Mary Shelley has written this for bad parents because most her kids passed away, but in my opinion I think that people should look at it openly and not look at it as why Mary Shelley has written it but also find other things which can be related to the novel.
