First person narrative is used in order to create a sense of horror, “How can I describe my emotions”. It allows the character to reveal his disguise and Mary Shelly adds closeness to the event. The effect of this is that as we are close to the action which makes the reader more involved.
Contrasting images are also used in order to create horror. “His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness”. This quote is comparing something ugly with something beautiful because it increases the ugliness. Also the image emphasizes the horror because they remind us that this creature is made of various parts.
Mary Shelly uses foreshadowing in order to create a sense of horror. Foreshadowing was used in Victor Frankenstein’s dream. His dream was seeing Elizabeth and kissing her and she turned into in his dead mother, “I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt Repulsive imagery is used to increase the horror, “I saw the grave-worms”.
Shelly shows later in the novel that Victor is responsible of Elizabeth’s death because he created the monster and the monster kissed Elizabeth which caused her death, “I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death”.
The monster connects to the dream because in Victor’s dream, Elizabeth dies, and in the real life she dies so the monster is the cause, “became livid with the hue of death”. Frankenstein’s action does result in the death of Elizabeth and this scene was absolute terrifying as the dream and reality were equally horrific. Also Victor cannot escape the consequences of his actions by going to sleep.
This is scary for the audience because two of the people he loved are dead, his mother and Elizabeth. Victor could not control his dream or he could not wake up which made it very scary. His dream and the reality was the same which was very weird because in the real life Elizabeth dies and in his dream, she also dies.
Repulsive images were used in order to create horror. “I saw the grave worms crawling in the folds of the flannels”. This shows repulsiveness because she says that worms are crawling over the body. This adds to the effect of horror because seeing a dead body is scary but seeing a dead body with grave worms on it adds to the effect even more. Grave worms are disgusting and were used to give an uncomfortable feeling to the audience. Marry Shelly also uses foreshadowing by writing “as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips they became livid with the hue of death, her features began to change”.
Mary Shelly uses a stanza from “The rime of the Ancient Mariner” to enhance the sense of horror. There is a similar message in the poem to Shelly’s novel because in Frankenstein, Victor plays with nature and in “The rime of the Ancient Mariner”, nature is also played with by the Marnier killing the albatross which goes against God, “Beware of the consequences of tampering with nature”. There is an idea of carrying a guilty conscience “a frightful fiend”. Marry Shelly also copies “like one on a lonely road” this is also written in the rime of the ancient mariner. She writes this because victor Frankenstein is feeling lonely because of what he has created while the mariner was lonely because of what he had killed. So it is giving the message not to play around with nature or else there will be severe consequences.
In my opinion I think that Marry Shelly is trying to get the message of not playing around with nature across. Victor Frankenstein played with nature so he suffered consequences, his mother’s death and the death of Catherine, his love.
My conclusion on Frankenstein is that Mary Shelley is showing through the use of the novel that not to play with life. As Victor Frankenstein created life, he was punished by God. Mary Shelley shows Victor as a brave and intelligent man whose mission was to create life and as soon as his mission was completed he wished that he could rewind time and not to create this horrific monster. I think that Frankenstein will always be a powerful piece of novel forever and will not get boring as all generations will enjoy reading it. The techniques which Mary Shelly used makes the novel so good, for example the way Shelley uses different language to create a image of the monster in the audiences mind, repulsive imagery, 1st person, contrasting images and pathetic fallacy are all types of different vocabulary which are used to create horror in the novel.
