Frankenstein embarks with a feeling of excitement as he is bringing to life the monster, with this, he quotes the words ‘anxiety’, ‘spark’, but interrupts himself with extreme distress as he realises he has brought to life a corpse of a creature which shouldn’t have been summoned to life. He then uses words like ‘catastrophe’ and ‘wretch’ to describe its horrid appearance. Frankenstein says ‘great God!’ which is linked to religious meanings. Shelley shows Frankenstein saying this quote as she is against the fact that the creature that has been ‘manufactured’, she uses this specific term as being religious it goes against her beliefs of ‘natural reproduction’. Shelley emphasises her disgust towards the creature by doing this. Frankenstein now realises the extreme stress he has put on his body during the ‘two years’ he created and developed the monster, ‘deprived myself of rest and health’. Here the writer infers clear disproval of Frankenstein and his creation as she repeats all the disasters he has caused due to his actions.
The first sentence of the second paragraph, ‘how can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe’ immediately indicates to the reader that Frankenstein is disgusted with the first appearance of the ‘newly born’ monster. He describes it as ‘vulgar’ and ‘horrid’. These extreme words show Frankenstein’s pure hate for the creature.
As the story progresses, Frankenstein’s state of mind slowly deteriorates. He realises how excited and happy he was before ‘the beauty of the dream vanished’, and how he is now. Shelley writes this to teach her readers about the consequences of doing these un-natural experiments and playing with God’s creation of man. The monster flees and as of that, Frankenstein’s fear worsens to paranoia. Frankenstein is shown to be so disturbed that he cannot even sleep. He has ‘wild dreams’ that he sees his beloved Elizabeth who ends up being the corpse of his dead mother. Frankenstein is so disorientated; he loses his natural immunity and becomes ill. He works himself up so much that he gets in such a poor state and is bed ridden with a fever. ‘Cold dew covered my forehead’. At this moment in the story, the reader is starting to lose interest of the suffering of Frankenstein as he has been dragging out his suffering for almost a whole chapter. At the beginning you acknowledged his suffering but it eventually becomes tedious. ‘I passed the night wretchedly’. Mary Shelley does this on purpose to emphasise the point that Frankenstein has been wrong in his doings. She makes the reader dislike Frankenstein through over explaining. This may be a consequence of Frankenstein’s actions, people disliking him.
Later on in Frankenstein’s ‘hour of need’, Clerval, his trusty companion arrives and the mood lifts; ‘I clapped my hands for joy, and ran down to Clerval’. Clerval realises that Frankenstein’s behaviour is absurd and realises that something is seriously wrong, ‘he saw a wildness in my eyes which he could not account’. Shelley says this to make Frankenstein seem ‘animal’ like. Animals in the wild act very much differently than home nurtured ones. They defend themselves and are in much more danger of predators, this is similar to Frankenstein as he is in danger from the monster. Frankenstein seems deluded and very basic like. Basic meaning not being able to cope without the presence of someone else, like for example, an animal. You get this impression from the word ‘wildness’.
After having a delirious breakdown Frankenstein is again bed ridden. Clerval, being the great friend he is, stays with Frankenstein throughout his ill days. ‘My friend could have restored me to life’. ‘Restored’ meaning new and back to life. Frankenstein’s recovery is explained in very little detail, ‘I recovered’. Shelley does this on purpose as not lose interest of the readers who have already read all of the trauma that Frankenstein has caused and been through. A way the reader can tell Frankenstein has been recovering for a long time is by Shelley’s use of skipping through the seasons. ‘A divine spring’ and ‘the whole winter’.
At the end of Chapter 5 we find Frankenstein feeling better. Mary Shelley uses pathetic fallacy again to describe Frankenstein’s recovery, ‘the young buds were shooting forth from the trees’. Indisputably, Frankenstein has recovered. Although this is so, he panics at one point when Clerval says ‘speak to you on one subject’. This fills Frankenstein with trepidation as he thinks to himself, ‘One subject! What could it be?’, ‘an object of whom I dared not to think’. When first read, the reader thinks that Frankenstein is about to go delirious again, but is interrupted by Clerval saying ‘compose yourself’. This is a fairly shocking sentence from Clerval as he does not usually take charge. He seems to know what is wrong with Frankenstein when he says ‘I will not mention it’. The sentence structure is presented to be short and quick to give an apprehensive atmosphere.
The last sentence of the chapter is of Clerval endorsing Frankenstein of a letter that had come for him from Elizabeth. ‘It is from your cousin, I believe.’ This is off the subject of the monster. The mood is fairly optimistic and relaxed. This suggests that the story is now moving on. The reader may now be expecting to find out about the family of Frankenstein in more detail as the reader has only touched on it briefly before. Another thing the reader could be anticipating is that of the monster, where it had gone, where it lives etcetera.
The key message that Mary Shelley is proposing is that of wrong doings. She, throughout the chapter, consistently reminds the reader of this ‘doing’ that Frankenstein has done. This being creating life without the natural way of conceiving it. She convincingly argues through the words of Frankenstein himself by dragging out his pain and suffering for a whole chapter. This may have been an extremely, agonizingly and serious topic for the reader to read in Shelley’s days, but now, the meaning has been lost with Frankenstein’s torture is drawing out. Nowadays, you would not expect to read such dreary writing but more gory and shocking stuff as things are more acceptable to do and say in this society than in Shelley’s days. In conclusion, Chapter 5 is a crucial part of the story as without it, the point that Shelley was forwarding, would not have been so prominent and important and the story may not have been so exciting.
