Monitoring the Development of Frankenstein

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, is a novel written by British author, Mary Shelley, about an ambitious scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who creates life in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Frankenstein is Shelley’s most significant piece of literature and is an important documentation of the 18th century. I strongly agree that the interaction between Shelley’s language and her ideas helped to shed light on substantial issues we face even today. Shelley’s novel remains powerful today because she uses sophisticated language, for example, allusion, motifs, narrative perspectives, to address critical ideas pertaining to any period—the dangerous nature of knowledge, the power of ambition, and alienation—topics that obsessed all the major Romantic writers.

Language plays an essential role in a powerful moment, the monster’s development; he learns to read and to speak, enabling him to understand his creation. The language of the monster is especially effective and conveys the disturbing message that everyone possesses the potential for both good and evil.

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Despite only being 18, Shelley utilises sophisticated language in Frankenstein to express her complex ideas. An example of a language choice she makes is the use of motifs. In the novel, a significant motif is the recurrence of light and fire. Light is used to show the power of knowledge, discovery and enlightenment. Robert Walton, a young British explorer with a sole dream to navigate the seas, asks, “What could not be expected in the country of eternal light?”. Walton’s dreams of prominence, domination, and fame. These obsessive dreams forecast the most frightful dream—Frankenstein’s goal to create life.

Frankenstein, similarly says he will create life and “pour a torrent of light into our dark world.” Shelley shows Walton and Frankenstein are blinded by the dangerous light of their ambitions and fail to recognise the moral implications of acquiring knowledge. All Victor’s experiments are undertaken in a small attic room by the light of a candle, which further emphasises the light motif.

They are fascinated with forbidden knowledge and they want to transgress the limits of their human capabilities. Shelley shows that the pursuit of knowledge can be a double-edged sword. An example in the real world is COVID-19; the pandemic enlightens us on the biological processes of viruses, however, knowledge of the virus is being used for biological warfare. Like light, fire is dangerous; however, it also comforts. The monster’s discovery of a flame reveals the duality of nature. The monster discovers it can harm, “In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain. How strange, I thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects!” When he loses the fire and its light and warmth, it is the only thing he “laments” as he departs the forest of Ingolstadt, proving that he begins to understand its tremendous and complicated power. This is a powerful moment because Shelley shows how fire plays an essential role in his transition from animalistic behaviour to a domesticated being and becomes a motif for the monster’s association with the world. Fire reveals his sensitivity and his tendency to protect what supports him; he cares for his fire as any parent would for a child.

Shelley uses narrative perspectives to tell her complicated story. Frankenstein is narrated in the first-person by several characters. The novel is written in an epistolary structure, which adds greater realism because it mimics the workings of real life. The monster’s story is the third primary narrative in the novel and constitutes the third concentric circle of the structure. The story is told to Victor Frankenstein, who repeats it to Walton, who writes it in letters to Margaret. The reader is set up to expect the monster to be animalistic and barbaric. However, the language in his narrative shows him to be intelligent and capable of feeling human emotions. Shelley uses the complex narrative structure to lead the reader gradually to the central ideas of the novel.

The monster says, “Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man... When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?” The monster uses very knowledgeable language; the sentences are complex and utilises semicolons for subclauses. Shelley makes the monster use triple construction,“no money, no friends, no kind of property” to make the monster’s argument more memorable. The rhetorical question at the end of his dialogue invites the reader, as well as Frankenstein and Walton, to agree with the argument. By giving the monster a point of view, Shelley brings upon a powerful moment; she forces us to consider his behaviour from a different perspective and to sympathise with him.

Allusions are used by Shelley to make references to other pieces of literature which provide a deeper layer of meaning. In ancient myth, Prometheus creates man from clay and steals fire from the Gods so that this creation can be more divine. Shelley creates Victor Frankenstein in the same way, stealing a god’s role when he created the monster. Prometheus was punished for his actions, and likewise, Frankenstein and the monster live lives of anguish. One night, the monster finds three books—Milton’s Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives, and Goethe’s Sorrows of Werter—all written in French. Shelley was reading these three books in the years of completing Frankenstein. Shelley lived among the practitioners of Romantic concepts and used many principles in Frankenstein. The monster is an isolated Romantic hero because of the rejection he bears from society; he is chased away because of his hideous appearance. Through the language, Shelley shows us a powerful issue of how many humans reject the less than average people who live on the borders of society. Shelley uses the language technique of allusions to connect her writing to the context of the larger world and helps us to understand the thoughts she is trying to portray.