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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The themes of giving birth and creating life, isolation and alienation and family and kinship.

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Introduction and problem definitionIn this short essay I would like to state thoughts and answer questions concerning the famous book "Frankenstein" by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. The story has been a huge influence on the genre of gothic novels, on female writers and on movie makers. Its themes have fascinated the literature scene and inspired other authors. This is why I would like to introduce the main themes leading through the story.

I will focus on the themes of giving birth and creating life, isolation and alienation and family and kinship. I will give a short overview on how these themes still fascinate the readers of this book almost 200 years after it was written.

While reading the book I wanted to find out more about the time …show more content…

Viktor takes no responsibility for the monster and the results of that will follow soon.

I see it as a warning by Shelley that is it what will happen to children that grow up being unloved and expelled. This is one of the points that makes this story still popular today. The issue is the same: especially children who have had a bad childhood are the ones who become violent towards others and themselves.

While reading the story for the second time I started being interested in the time frame the events are happening in. I read several interpretations on the internet and several books and only then did I notice that the three seasons are of about nine month length. This is exactly the amount of time a woman is in her pregnancy. Again this refers to Frankenstein trying to replace the role of woman.

Isolation and AlienationThe next theme I would like to discuss is isolation or alienation. It is a theme that links the monster and Frankenstein that close to each other that this topic of comparing both of them would be enough to write a complete new essay about. Obviously at first it is the monster that seems to be the lonely one. "His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath … his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. " (1.4.16ff) The creature is ugly and monstrous but compared to Viktor he did not choose to be lonely himself, he got

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