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How Is Nature Used In Frankenstein

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Mountains, rivers, glaciers, pastures, forests, ruins, and cliffs; areas filled with the lush foliage, echoing calls of various fauna, and the roars and mumbles of moving aquatic bodies. These solitary locales were the haunts of Romantic writers and their imaginations, and still offer refuge for modern writers. These unrefined places are often referenced, revered, and hailed by authors as the center of mental and bodily wellness. Nature as a common theme has been depicted in various ways, with writers using different literary devices to create the rich and lengthy descriptions of natural places that are famous to Romantic works of literature. Two specific authors that illustrate Nature in different ways are Mary Shelley and William Wordsworth. …show more content…

They both use visual imagery to create landscapes and natural scenes but one way they differ appears in their choice of adjectives. For example, Wordsworth describes a valley scene with adjectives like “pastoral”, which implies a reference to the common man in contrast to the vocabulary Shelley uses, reflecting the concept that wealthy people tend to retreat to the mountain villas for relaxation, as seen in the first description of the ruined castles in the Arve Valley of Frankenstein. Shelley aims to describe her natural scenes with words that give off the feeling of grandeur, for example she uses the word “imperial” when referencing a glacier. In addition to using different classes of adjectives, the way in which the two authors present their examples of imagery is uniquely different. Wordsworth uses short, small, often two word phrases and clauses, i.e. “plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts” (Wordsworth 289) to present his information: as compared to Shelley, who uses complex sentences to create an image of the countryside like the following: “ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piney mountains, the impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from among the trees formed a scene of singular beauty” (Shelley 107). The third and final difference in imagery is the use of the imagery itself that is applied under the concept of Nature being a living force or spirit. In this case, Shelley choses to personify Nature as a spirit or being that serves the purpose of lifting the observer to a state of happiness, called “the sublime”. This is evident in the recurring statements of Nature “filling [him] with a sublime ecstasy” (Shelley 110) and when the winds “whispered in soothing accents” (Shelley 108). Nature in Frankenstein has been described as human-like force that speaks to the main character, Victor Frankenstein; an example

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