Frankenstein began to study the anatomy of the human body; he put this into practice by building the monster. It was to be 8 feet in height and very strong. Frankenstein wanted to make the monster as perfect as it could be. He dug up old bodies to collect certain body parts. “Yet to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles, and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour.” Victor Frankenstein’s task was to be a hard and arduous one. All the intricacies of the human body had to be catered for, veins, muscles and all the different organs and parts of the body had to be found and placed in the frame of the monster.
Frankenstein had great prospects for the monster he believed it would thank him for bringing him to life, “A new species would bless me as its creator and source.” Frankenstein toiled with nature by creating a new species and he became like a God to that new species. He new that he would be the God to this new species and he took advantage of this.
Mary Shelly creates a very gloomy atmosphere in the Birth Scene. “Dreary night of November, “It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the pains, and my candle was nearly burnt out.”
Frankenstein uses electricity “to infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” He describes the monster and it’s features being beautiful. Again Frankenstein describes himself as a God. “Great God.” The monsters limbs were all in proportion. “His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed only of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.”
Mary Shelly uses language that makes the reader scared. “glimmer of the half-extinguished light.” Obviously the two chapters themselves are fairly frightening. Frankenstein digging up dead bodies and sewing up the different limbs is frightening enough without the language and style of writing Mary Shelly uses.
Alex Rennie 25th January 2004
