Courtney Jurson – Language Development of Frankenstein's Creature As a Communication Sciences & Disorders major, I am currently taking classes about the development of spoken language. I am also learning about how infants and children learn language and the importance of knowing how to communicate. This is why Volume 2, Chapter 4 of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein interested me because this is where the creature learns language from the cottagers. It was fascinating to connect the language development of Frankenstein's creature to the linguistic development of a child. Frankenstein is created proportionate to an adult but he has to develop this abilities and senses from the beginning like a human infant. At the moment of creation, he is overloaded
In Chapter 10 of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the monster employs an array of compelling rhetorical questions to underscore his anguish and despair in the hopes of winning his creator’s sympathy and understanding. Upon enduring Victor’s barrage of execration, the monster fitfully cries out, “Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery?” (Shelley 81). Distraught, the monster demands for what higher purpose does the arbiter of his future whimsically desire to torture and “increase” his “misery”. Like clinging onto a frayed rope, the monster hopes that his pitiful coagulation of naive optimism and sorrow has the ability to trigger a sense of sympathy in his creator that would mark the end of his isolated and disheartened state.
Humans are known for bestowing their judgment irrationally and based on the “book cover” of a person, they may degrade their fellow human into the worst positions of the social ladder. Mary Shelley, in her novel Frankenstein, expands on this perspective by using mood and tone to parallel with the circumstances of an event occurring in her novel with shifts throughout the context of the book, symbolized by the changes in nature and seasons. This shift is made frequently between the agonized, desperate, frightful, maybe even suicidal mood and tone with the occurrence of dreadful acts of murder and execution, to the more calming, soothing, optimistic and life-full during a physical and spiritual recovery.
“He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun or stars, or feel the winds play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense, will pass away; and in this condition must I find my happiness.”(161)
Victor Frankenstein, a man obsessed with scientific oddities since his youth, finds a way to reanimate the dead. In the hope of creating “a new species [who] would bless me as their creator,” (33) he designs what he hopes to be the creation of a man-made human being. However, his attempt produces merely a living being, a being which Victor grows to despise and fear, despite his initial claims that “darkness had no effect upon [his] fancy” (31). However when faced with his creation later within the novel he describes his experiment as a catastrophe when he “saw the dull yellow eyes of the creature open” (Shelley 35). In an attempt to be accepted by Victor, the creature journeys into the village to learn the ways of the humans. However
The book Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, is a unique novel in that it switches between three different narrators throughout the story. When Robert Walton is narrating, the tone is meditative and the mood is enthralled; when Frankenstein narrates the tone is horrified and the mood is suspenseful, and when the Creature is narrating, the tone is reflective and the mood is sympathetic.
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the narrator, Dr. Frankenstein, enhances an atmosphere of horror through diction and imagery, which creates escalating a tone of darkness. Frankenstein had been working on this experiment for months, and on a late, fall night it finally presents itself. The narrator is extremely anxious, and images of a lack of light, his “candle… nearly burnt out,” promotes a tone of fear and disquietness. Frankenstein means to contrast the living and the dead by reviving a “lifeless thing,” but ends up locating the peak of dread.
“Nurture vs. Nature”, are some individuals destined to become evil? Or does the environment and experiences of the individual shape who they are? In Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein” there is a character (the creature) that these questions apply to. Through her use of diction, changes in perspective, and imagery, she was able to make the creature seem more human than creature by making the reader sympathize with the creature.
Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is a book with a deep message that touches to the very heart. This message implies that the reader will not see the story only from the perspective of the narrator but also reveal numerous hidden opinions and form a personal interpretation of the novel. One of its primary statements is that no one is born a monster and a “monster” is created throughout socialization, and the process of socialization starts from the contact with the “creator”. It is Victor Frankenstein that could not take the responsibility for his creature and was not able to take care of his “child”. Pride and vanity were the qualities that directed
monster avoid pain again and how he is able to sit and think about how
In the excerpt from Frankenstein: The creature's Request, the language level of the author is advanced and descriptive that aided in building the specific tone of the story. Besides, the diction is evaluated to find out the language level. For
Imagine an eight-foot-tall, misshapen human child. You might complain that this is contradictory - but do it anyway. Imagine some sort of humanoid being with the mind of a human child in an eight-foot body, green with a nail in its head if you want. This is what Frankenstein's creature is. Frankenstein's creature is mentally a child, and we see its evolution through traditional child development in the course of its narrative. But the creature is the only member of its species, and therefore its narrative can be taken to represent the history of an entire species - the creature's first experiences can be viewed as an amalgam of creation myths.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has several literary devices- such as structure, imagery, and many intricate details. She perfectly places words and puts them in such a way that the passage has a dual tone. Shelley begins with establishing the monster’s nature as being peaceful, because he wanted to reason with Victor. Him wanting to reason shows the importance of his decision to meet with Victor and shows that even though he has been through a great deal, he is still respectable to others. The audience gets to see the creature’s humble nature and makes the audience feel sympathetic towards him. This creates a peaceful tone to the passage. The monster wants to be loved by “any being and if they showed benevolence to me, I would return them hundred an hundred fold” (Shelley 148). The creature’s begging makes it sound like Victor will answer his plea. Using a broad term like “being”, demonstrates the monster’s need to be loved, putting him in a position with the audience again feeling empathetic towards him. Eventually, Victor’s compassion begins to fluctuate. The desperation the creature has looks like the desperation a human might have. This only gives the readers another reason to relate to him which leads to the other tone, impossible. Victor’s unreasonableness heightens this shared discontent as not only has the build up of the creature’s wistful nature made him an utmost identifiable character, but our views are adjusted in such as way that Frankenstein is seen
In a world of continuous external forces and the impact the society has on human growth and development, we have to analyze Erik Erikson developmental theory as it relates to the “monster” in Frankenstein. Erikson suggests that social interaction and experiences play an important role that shape the development and growth of human beings through eight different stages. Throughout the book, the “monster” goes through each stage, which impacts his development as a living being.
Shelley uses slave language to show human nature to be self-destructive in its passions. As Frankenstein works to achieve the ability to re-animate dead people, he thinks to himself about the time and effort spent on the creation, “my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety and I appeared rather like one doomed to toil in the mines or some other unwholesome trade than an artist occupied by his favorite employment. Every night I was oppressed to a slow fever” (57). Frankenstein realizes what he is creating and is excited by what the creature will be like. However, his anxiety, keeps him in check.
The novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus cannot be categorized into only one genre because it has various features of different genres. It is certainly a tragedy. Although the core narration starts with a story of how Frankenstein’s father meets and marries the protagonist’s mother, she first has to endure the death of her father called Beaufort. Thus, the novel already begins as a tragic exposition. As a result, the narrative fiction ends with almost everyone including the protagonist and the antagonist as dead.