Victor changes from being delighted and curious to being obsessed with science. “I read with odour those works, “I attend lectures and cultivated the acquaintance of the men of science of the university.” This shows that victor pays full attention on his studying and attends his lectures. He is a keen person.
Victor becomes secretive about his work because he doesn’t want anyone to find out what he is up to for the reason that the news will end up to his family which he did not want. Victor became ill after creating the monster. This is because he released with horror what he created.
Before victor formed life, he was happy and looking forward to his creation but subsequently he lost control because he got scared of what he had produced. I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundation of future success. Victor thinks he could create a human due to his present success in bringing a dead frog to life and was determined to find out if he could create a human. When victor had created a human that ended up becoming a monster he had many regrets, he says, “I have worked for two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life in to an in animated body.” Victor thinks bringing this monster to life was a waste of time. He also could not endure the aspects of the being he had created.
In order to look at Mary Shelly’s skill as a writer I am going to focus on the opening of chapter 5. In particular, I am going to focus on the two bits of the opening of chapter 5 to show how Mary shelly builds up horror by creating a picture in the reader’s mind of rain patting on the window. “My candle was burnt out.” This emphasises he is alone in a dark room during the creation of the monster. In addition, a candle burnt out brings the image of horror in the readers mind. Usually the places that are scary are places that are dark and the candle burning out tells the reader, the creation is scary and isn’t going to be a very pleasant creation.
Mary Shelly starts building up tension at the opening of chapter one. She says, “It was on a dreary night of November.” She chose this time of the year because it is cold and there is less daylight and more darkness; it is cold and raining during this time of the year, which gives it the effect of horror and shows that it isn’t going to be a normal human being.
Mary Shelly uses this sentence “it was already one in the morning; the rain patterned dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out. When my glimmer of the half extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. “This is a long sentence full of punctuation. The long sentence and punctuation makes the passage interesting and build up tension. It gives the reader reading the novel the effect of realism.
Mary shelly uses verbs to describe the monster such as, ‘opened’ ‘muttered’ ‘wrinkled’ ‘fixed.’ the importance of these verbs are that the monster is active and alive.
In the 19th century there was less opportunities to travel, the most common way was horse and carriage this was for the people who could afford it at the time and the people who could not use their legs and walked everywhere. The rich people had better facilities for travelling. They would have a high-class horse, which is clean and posh with a carriage.
In the 19th century, term for science was natural philosophy, which is on old term for physical science. It means the study or creation of the theories about the nature of existence, knowledge, beliefs or behaviour. A philosophy is a set of theories of this kind. ‘Natural’ itself means things, which exist in nature rather than being made or caused by man. The word which we use now instead of ‘natural philosophy’ is ‘science’ which means the studying of nature and behaviour of everything in the universe using the observation and the experiments, trying to arrange the results in systems of law.
Letter writing was important because there were no other forms of communication in the 19th century. There were no mobiles, radio or television so everyone needed to learn how to write letters. Robert Walton wrote letters to his family when he was on holiday in Ingolstadt. If no one knew how to write people would not be able to stay in touch with each other, also life becomes hard if you were not able to write.
Mary shelly belonged to the ‘romantic’ movement. Romantics believed in the individual expression of passion, emotion and imagination in art. Mary’s husband, shelly and their friend lord Bryan, was both romantic poets.
Mary Shelly’s purpose might have been to tell the writer through expressions and images that god “god created man in his own image.” no matter how hard someone tries to create human it cannot be like gods creations of human beings because god alone has the creation of humans. She is also trying to explore themes of good and evil, beauty and ugly.
Victor tries acting like God. “Frightful might it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the creator of the world.” Mary shelly suggests to everyone that you should not create anything yourself as you can see victor wasted 2 years to create this monster; and was away from his family, and had no contact with them due to the creation of this human that turned out to be a monster. She is trying to suggest to everyone creating something is not worth the hassle, as the image you imagine can never become reality.
This novel is relevant to today because in this century they make living things like test tube babies etc. Victor also tried making a human being back then, but had turned out to be a monster. Nowadays it is easier to create life and it does not take a lot of time to make a living thing, as with victor, he spent 2 years of his life away from his family, alone to make a human being that was a disaster.
