Prompt
2: The Purpose of Place in Frankenstein
Few stories use the environment of
the narrative as effectively as Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Throughout the novel, setting is used to mirror and
enhance the emotions of the stories characters.
Right from the first pages of the
book we see the setting play a huge role in the story. Dr. Walton describes the
frosty winds of London and the frigid weather on his journey to the North Pole.
Shelly is already foreshadowing the cold, loneliness of the characters and the
misery that is yet to come throughout the story. In Walton’s final letter to
Mrs. Saville, he writes, “Last Monday we were nearly surrounded by ice, which
closed in the ship on all sides… our situation was somewhat dangerous,
especially as we were compassed round by a very thick fog.” (Shelly, 58)
Through this description of the setting, Shelly is using the ship as a metaphor
for Walton. He is alone in his cold thoughts and the future does not look
promising on finding someone to share his experiences with. This also
foreshadows one of the main themes of the story, the wanting of a companion,
which the monster exhibits later in the story. However, after finding
Frankenstein and growing found of him, he cites the beauty of the stars and the
other beauties of his surroundings. This is a key link in showing that the
environment the characters describe is reflective of the character’s current
state.
When Dr. Frankenstein begins telling
his story, the setting of his childhood is far different from that of the scene
on the ship. Shelly carefully uses words that paint Frankenstein’s childhood as
warm and loving. For example, she describes Elizabeth as “gay and playful as a
summer insect.” (Shelly 66) There is never a mention of the cold, snow, or ice.
Setting this warm tone is important to the story because as the story
progresses, Frankenstein’s actions are partially motivated by the need to get
back the warm loving care he used to be accustomed to.
At the start of chapter four, Shelly
immediately uses the setting to foreshadow the eventual creation of the monster
by describing the scene as a “Dreary night of November.” She depicts the
darkness at one in the morning and the consistent fall of rain that is
signaling the event that will lead both the monster and Frankenstein to lives
of misery.
It is only fitting that when
Frankenstein and the monsters meet each other on the peak of Montanvert that it
is a snowy isolated area. Shelly continues to depict the cold isolation both men
feel by depicting ice a league deep with the surface “rising like waves of a
troubled sea.” (Shelly 117) Shelly also shows strong symbolism by making the
monster tell Frankenstein his story in a cave. In the cave they are completely
alone, just as the monster and Frankenstein are.
Throughout Frankenstein Shelly does a masterful job of using the stories
setting to describe the characters. By doing this she invokes feelings that are
more powerful than just describing the feelings of the characters. Her method
allows the reader to better feel, and connect with what the characters are
going through.
1 comment:
Obviously at some level you're correct that the setting and the emotions of Frankenstein reflect one another. Still, I think you oversimplify or exaggerate a little. After all, when Victor does find his companion the arctic does not thereby grow less hostile, does it?
re: Victor's childhood, how about the tree struck by lightning, which he explicitly connects to everything that goes astray in his life?
Overall you make effective use of multiple passages, and you do a good job staying focused on details of the text. Your interest is primarily in the *cold* settings, with a brief mention of Victor's childhood as a contrast. This isn't a bad way to handle things, especially in an initial draft, but especially given your interest in isolation and reflection, I'd really like to see you also work with the use of water in general (Victor going out repeatedly on the water), if you revise. Also note that Victor literally sees reflections in the water on multiple occasions.
Also if you revise, you want to move toward a more specific/ambitious argument. In other words, it's good to note that settings and emotions reflect each other - you should push it farther, to ask what it means, what we can learn, or what we can discover specifically once we realize that these reflections are present. How, for instance, might we better understand some part of the novel once we've come to this realization?
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