Analyzing Mary Shelley's Passage From 'The Mortal Immortal'

“But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me or who claimed any intercourse with me.” (Shelley

In the attached passage, Mary Shelley weaves numerous rhetorical devices and effectively utilizes different styles of syntax to enhance the explanation of how Frankenstein becomes interested in chemistry and decides to make his own accomplishment in science.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in 1791 in London. She is the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Goodwin. Wollstonecraft was a radical feminist writer, and Goodwin was a writer as well as a philosopher. It was said that this couple's combined intellect was dangerous to society; however, days after Mary's birth, Wollstonecraft died due to complications from the pregnancy. Mary spent a lot of time visiting her mother's grave when she was growing up. Her father taught her how to spell her mother's name by having her trace the letters on the headstone with her fingers, an interesting yet morbid way to teach a seven year old how to spell. Goodwin raised Mary by himself for the early part of her

The critique of Victor’s carelessness mirrors the new technologies that humanity tries to innovate upon society. Shelley reflects on the demise in the progression of humanity because this will only further remove us from our compassion and identity [p. 266- Mary Shelley bio]. Thus, science in Shelley’s novel offers no hope, only death for both mankind

Shelley depicts the romantic’s love for nature and the desire to understand and acquire nature’s power. Frankenstein finds comfort when he is at his lowest, but at the same time, he is horrified by his creation and its quest for revenge.

“...Hateful day when I received life!' Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?.... Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred” (Shelley 119). The monster after discovering that his own creator is horrified by his existence, continues to lose hope about his position in the world. He is left alone with no one to care for him or show him love. “I was dependent on none and related to none….My person was hideous and my stature gigantic... These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them”(Shelley 117). The quote expands on the idea of how the monster has expanded his knowledge from listening and reading literature on his existence and his place int the world. “Sometimes I allowed my thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of Paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathizing with my feelings and cheering my gloom;...”(Shelley 118). This quote continues on the theme of how the monster is expanding knowledge and becoming much more intelligent and aware of his place on earth. It shows how his thoughts are directly focused and stemmed on a few pieces of literature. It shows that he may be narrow-minded and needs to broaden his horizons to other possibilities and pieces of

The poem "Ozymandias" is one of the best sonnets of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In this poem Shelley described a mighty king who was striving in his whole life for his possessions and got involved in worldly assignments so much that he forgot his ultimate destiny. Beside this, Shelley reminds the readers of their mortality through the realization that our earthly accomplishments, so important to us now, will one day be finished. By drawing these vivid and ironic pictures in readers minds, with different symbols, Shelley was trying to illustrate that no one lives forever in the

In the passage Shelley skillfully paints an intense image in the audience’s mind. Although it should be an exciting moment for Victor, Shelley purposely makes the scene dark, drab, and dreary. She chooses illustrate this scene in a sinister way because this moment is only the beginning of the horrors come. She achieves her dark image by incorporating details such as the lighting, weather, time of day, and even the time of year. All of these details come together to effectively paint a vivid picture of Victor and his creation as he breathes life into it. The imagery in this passage also greatly affects the tone of the passage.

Frankenstein was a vehicle that voiced Shelley’s warnings concerning mankind meddling with the natural order. During the Fourth Industrial Revolution, imaginative humans have acquired the knowledge to modify life, going as far as to craft designer babies through gene therapy. Once the ideal specimen has been created, why not prolong its existence? Mortals like Zoltan Istvan, a political transhumanist, preach this belief in the crusade against death. Quite blithely, this modern Frankenstein proclaims his goal to “control” aging, challenging man to attain his destiny to “become Godlike.” While immortality would emancipate humans from corporeal limitations, mankind would be playing God, tampering with the sacred cycle of life and death. Shelley

The next significant mention on this subject is in line two of the second stanza were the sentence: “A pulse in the eternal mind ”. This shows that mortality is indeed an important issue, this however has greater connotations as it shows that he feels he has left an impression on the world which he later puts down to being English.

The author’s diction makes the reader feel that death ca be defeated. For example, death has been called “mighty and dreadful” but the author shows that it is not more than a “short sleep” where men go for the “rest of their bones.” The general idea of death is frightful and scary, but the reader is told that it’s only a short phase everyone goes through. It’s an opportunity for men to separate their soul and physical body. In

In Mary Shelley’s novel, nature plays a vital role in the development of the plot. Nature is considered a female part because Mother Nature is the collective personification of life. Nature is life-bearing and nurturing, as females are to their offspring. In spite of nature being feminine, Victor

Shelley’s presentation of specific and powerful diction helps illuminate his strong thoughts about the mutability of humans. Shelley’s use of the two words “poison” and “pollutes” in the third stanza of the poem alludes to his thoughts about the human mind mentioned in his biography, “We rest.---A dream has power to poison sleep; / We rise.---One wandering thought pollutes the day; / We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep; / Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:” (Shelley, 1734). Shelley was frequently bullied as a child and was expelled from school for being an alleged atheist; thus, he had notions before writing the poem about man’s corruption and “man’s general

In the second stanza Shelley describes the frailty of human existence. In lines five through nine humans are describes as "forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings/ Give various response to each varying blast,/ To whose frail frame no second motion brings/ One mood or modulation like the last.” Shelley uses this as a metaphor that expands on the concept of human morality. In this stanza humans are compared to “forgotten lyres” saying that we will be forgotten when we are dead and gone. The different moods of the stanza are created by the different sounds of the lyre. Humans are being compared to instruments with beautifully melodies have been forgotten. Shelley is saying that once

The romantic period was characterized by a marked withdraw from the techniques of the literary period and ideas, that introduced more rational and scientific in nature. Romantic poetry and prose, by contrast, was intended to express a new and visionary relationship to the imagination (Fitch). The romantic poets were always seeking a way to capture and represent the sublime moment and experience (Fitch), the more personal experience, the better. In many romantic poems the authors and their writing are identical. This is one of the ways Shelly embraces the literary period and at the same time matches the specific romantic ideal. She takes Frankenstein and describes him not by her personal experience or in her own voice, but yet she still is still characterizing a single quest to achieve the sublime. Victor Frankenstein’s quest was to make a creature out of raw