Natural Metaphors In Frankenstein By Mary Shelley

Nature is an important part of both Frankenstein and his creation’s life. Often Nature is used to describe certain points in victor’s life, for example, Marry Shelley uses metaphors in nature to describe Frankenstein’s youth. “I find it arises, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.” The use of nature to describe Frankenstein’s feelings is a prominent part of the book. Nature is also used as a calming technique for Frankenstein. After Frankenstein finds that his creation has murdered his brother he retreats to nature to calm himself and regain strength. “By degrees, the calm and heavenly scene restored me". Nature is also used as an escape for Frankenstein. After the execution of Justine, a dear friend to victor, the Frankenstein family takes a trip to Belrive to try to put their minds at peace. While there, victor took a boat and sailed in the water to pass the time and get his mind off recent events. “And I the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly”. Similarly, the monster also shares a deep appreciation for Nature. After the monster was created Frankenstein fled from his house, leaving the monster to

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

This novel reflects Shelley’s own childhood, which consisted of her feeling obligated to rebel against her own father’s wishes and his choice for her marriage. Frankenstein is a way for Shelley to tell her own experiences with parental conflict and how she feels she was affected by her demanding father and the environment she grew up in, by comparing herself to Victor’s monster. Shelley analyzed her own characteristics, and the characteristics of her father, and placed them within Victor and the

As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak”4 The following day, Victor inquires about the “origins of thunder and lightning” to which his father replies with, “Electricity.” One cannot help but associate this with Victor’s passion for harboring electricity of scientific use. This one resonant moment, caused by nature, sears itself into Victor’s mind. This foreshadowing of Victor’s future endeavors to conquer nature is highly contradictory to Shelley’s attempts to represent the power of nature, which is quite fascinating. Furthermore, what can almost be described as a medicinal quality of nature is represented when Victor returns to Belrive. “I remained two days at Lousanne, in this painful state of mind. I contemplated the lake: the water were placid; all around was calm, and the snowy mountains, ‘the palaces of nature,’ were not changed. By degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me.”5 This interpretation of nature’s healing abilities certainly connects the Romantic’s viewpoint on nature, which helps validate Shelley’s representation.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein deeply develops the trope of nature vs. nurture. The romantic era is characterized by a desire to revert to natural animalistic living in the world. Shelley’s main characters embody nature and nurture respectively. Victor, raised in a loving home, kills with no concern and disregards his caring family. The Monster, Victor’s creation, on the other hand, is forced to live in nature like an animal with no companion. Victor is Shelley’s direct comment on the Victorian lifestyle characterized by material possession and religious moral structure. Victor embodies one who is grounded in societally constructed niceties and formalities but is corrupted by the lifestyle. The monster is shown to be the morally correct character

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley has a simple origin, compared to other stories. While stories such as It by Stephen king started a several year process of creation, Frankenstein began simply as a campfire story Mary Shelley shared with her writer friends one evening. Although the origins of this novel are fairly simple, it provides an in depth psychological perspective on the darker side of human psyche through the shifting first person perspective. Usually these darker aspects are associated with the character’s personal struggles, but one specific theme in all the characters. The theme of obsession has been consistent and the central focus of the three main characters Victor, the creature, and Robert. With this central theme in mind the author, Mary Shelley shows that obsession leads to the characters suffering negative psychological and physical effects, as well as impair their decision making. This is depicted through the decline of physical and mental health through Victor’s struggles with his obsessions with knowledge and justice.

In 1818 Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley. In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein brings a creature to life. The creature kills William, Henry Clerval, and Elizabeth. Victor had promised to make a female creature for the creature, but he did not fulfill his promise. This makes the creature enraged. The creature runs away and Victor follows him. Victor gets on a boat with Walton. Victor dies and the creature comes and is very sad that his creator has died. The creature says that he must end his suffering and he jumps into the ocean. In the novel Frankenstein, Shelley uses the theme of nature to show how it is like the characters of the story and how it affects the characters.

Throughout the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley, the creature is subjected to countless acts of violence and rejection. For a monster to develop, one must have been formerly exploited either by an individual or their society. The creature is not only a physical product of science, but his atrocious behavior is also an explicit result of Victor’s actions toward him. The creature was not born a monster, but slowly morphed into one as he experiences violence and rejection from his society.

Robert Walton, the captain of the ship that finds Frankenstein, notes “broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he [Frankenstein] does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions seem still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth” (Shelley 16). In the presence of the starry sky and the sea the thoughts of death escape him. On Victor’s last and darkest day the element of nature is brought into the scene suggesting the importance nature plays within the novel. Despite the monsters deformities and seclusion from society, nature is able to lift his spirits and bring him hope for a better future. Nature has the same healing effect upon the monster as with Victor, “…spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my [his] memory, the present was tranquil, and the future gilded by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy” (Shelley 99). With spring comes hope, as the flowers blossom the monsters feels his spirits being elevated. Just as nature flourishes, the monster is growing as well.

First, she uses the weather to describe Victors appearances and actions. When Victor is growing up, he appreciates and admires nature in its natural beauty; however, when he lives in his isolated tower, he ignores nature. Because of this, he becomes ill and his family thinks he is dead. Frankenstein claims that during the process of finding success, “no one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane…the summer months passed while I was thus engaged…in one pursuit. It was a most beautiful season; never did the fields bestow a more plentiful harvest…but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature” (Shelley 81). Frankenstein compares his drive for success to the intensity of a hurricane. Hurricanes ultimately end in demolition and therefore Shelley uses nature to symbolize destruction. Also, Frankenstein states that his eyes have become “insensible” to the “charms of nature.” Nature is passing him by in the surroundings,though eyes are supposed to adjust to their surroundings and notice things around them however, his eyes no longer function well enough for him to notice or admire nature. After working like this for years, he inevitably becomes ill and stays away from society. Hence proving the common theme that Mary Shelley is trying to convince the readers of : Nature must not be ignored and

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

The environment has a lot to say in Marry Shelly's Frankenstein. It seems to reflect somewhat what is going on emotionally with Victor in the story. Victor finds solace in solitude with nature, and appears to use it as a coping mechanism to escape from the horrors of his life. Nature also ties into how the monster Victor has created feels, but in a much different way than it does for him.

“Here we find nature to be the circumstance which[…] judges like a god all men that come to her.” is one of the first statements by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “Nature”, referring to nature’s role in romanticism. Nature, as well as science, are one of the main topics depicted in writings of the romantic period. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein can be attached to these writings. Her novel implies many natural and scientific characteristics that approach throughout the novel and finally clash by Victor Frankenstein’s creation of the monster. The following essay states the importance of nature and science in Frankenstein and argues that Frankenstein’s monster is a personalization of the danger involved in connecting both nature and science.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley explores the fight between man and nature through the story of eager scientist Victor Frankenstein, who artificially creates life from the body parts of the deceased with disastrous consequences. By highlighting the intense power of nature, Shelley comments on the folly of attempting to subjugate nature to bend to one’s will.

Given the deep ties to nature that Mary Shelley explores within Frankenstein, the principles and methodology of ecocriticism can be applied in many different ways. The interaction of humanity and nature is a concept explored throughout the novel, relating directly to a core tenet of ecocriticism, "directly relat[ing] who we are as human beings to the environment" (Bressler 231). Being as there is no "single, dominant methodology" (235) within ecocriticism, the extent to which we can use ecocriticism to interact with Frankenstein contains considerable depth. However, I will look to a few main methodologies of ecocriticism to look at Frankenstein in detail to uncover how the novel deals with the changing attitudes of humanity and nature in