What Does The Light Symbolize In The Book Frankenstein

Throughout Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses various reoccurring images. Motifs such as the moon, eyes, and fire are seen many times throughout and add a stronger sense of understanding to the novel. Although windows do not appear nearly as many times as these other images, their consistent placement in important scenes makes them notable in the text. By further examining the placement and context of window references, the reader can use this symbol as a tool to deepen the understanding of the relationship between Victor Frankenstein and the creature.

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 Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly, the creature is a seemingly cold-hearted serial killer bent on destroying Victor Frankenstein’s family. In the book there is a motif of light and darkness that is recurring throughout the story. The etymology of the word dark means “sad, cheerless; sinister, wicked...the absence of light" implying that being light means you are benevolent, kind, honorable. To put it simply, if you are dark you are bad, and if you are light you are good. The creature is inherently good, however he turns bad because mankind sinned against him. It is not the creature’s fault that he turned out the way he did; it is the fault of those who influenced him to go bad.

Symbols allow for authors to go beyond what is know through literal terms and create connections between otherwise vastly distinct concepts or objects. In the short story “Roman Fever”, we see that symbols, specifically the protagonist Grace Ansley’s knitting, and the full moon, give depth to the underlying issues of the story. Towards the beginning of the story, it is told that for the women it will be a “full moon night, they would remember” and the full moon is mentioned several times, which shows its importance as a symbol (Wharton 2). In literature, a

Mary Shelley utilizes figurative language in this excerpt to describe the surroundings of Frankenstein on his journey home and set the tone of gloomy, because of his brother’s death. Shelley uses personification to express the pattern of the raindrops as “violence quickly increasing” as if the raindrops were a person becoming very violent. This figurative language device develops the tone by tying into the violent actions of whoever murdered William, Frankenstein’s brother. Shelley uses the figurative language device of simile to compare the weather of nature such as, “vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire”. Shelley begins the sentence with a cheerful tone then takes a

The magnification of Victor Frankenstein’s darkness in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein can be shown through his actions alone. But, with the addition of pure and monstrous characters, Frankenstein’s evil is brought to light through their actions as well. Though overcome with depression and suffering, light shines into Frankenstein’s world, ultimately amplifying his darkness. Elizabeth Lavenza magnifies Frankenstein’s darkness through her light because she loved him in spite of his evil, her love ultimately kept him alive, and the essence of her encouraged him to destroy the Monster in the end.

Shelley also uses a metaphor to describe the mental state of Elizabeth, “I feel as if I were walking the edge of a precipice” (Shelley 61). This metaphor is vividly describing how depressed Elizabeth has become since Justine’s death. She feels as if she were just a tiny push away from her life being over. The deaths of William and Justine have brought her so close to the edge of it that all that needs to happen for her life to be over is just one more little thing. Lastly, Shelley uses a rhetorical question to illustrate Elizabeth’s frustration with how her life has gone, “Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?” (Shelley 61). Elizabeth is asking this question out of frustration and anger towards the world around her. At this point, she had lost her cousin, William, and just recently lost her best friend and someone she referred to as a sister, Justine. With all that has happened to her, she is rightfully infuriated at the world. She feels like the world has become unfair towards her and she hates it. On the whole, Shelley used literary devices to tell how Elizabeth is

Frankenstein is to be “sometimes considered one of the first science fiction novels” (Fox,stacy ”Romantic and Gothic Representation in Frankenstein”). Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley. In this novel the main characters where Victor Frankenstein, his creation the monster, Robert Walton, Elizabeth Lavenza, Alphonse Frankenstein, and Henry Clerval. Frankenstein starts out with a normal boy named Victor Frankenstein who discovers an early interest in science. Victor later goes off to college to study science and ends up creating a monster. Throughout the novel the monster is stereotyped by his looks and is traumatized and goes for revenge against his creator when Victor refuses to make him a

Eleven days after Mary Shelley's birth, her mother, the famed author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, succumbed to puerperal fever, leaving her [Mary Shelley's] father, William Godwin, bereft of his beloved companion. In her honor, Godwin puts together a loving tribute entitled Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the

Symbols can be used as a representation of an object, function or process. There are symbols used every day whether that be in movies or books, on signs, etc. In the Lord of the Flies, there are several symbols; such as the conch shell, the beast, and the signal fire. Also, in Night, there are different symbols that mean different things such as the fire and night. Symbols can be hard for people to interpret, because they can mean different things to different people.

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, references many other works of literature in her renowned book. To name a few of the referenced works there were John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the Greek “Prometheus myth”, and the widely known poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Each of these allusions gave a new meaning to Shelley’s story, affecting how each of the readers interpreted her words.

“So much for self -- self, that burr that will stick to one. I can 't get it off yet” (quoted in Frederick L. Jones [ed.], The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964, II, 108-109). Shelley’s letter to Leigh Hunt in 1819 reflects his desire to escape from his self, the desire to abandon his own perspective in order to better experience the world around him. In his poetry, Shelley questions the possibility and validity of transcendent experiences as well as capturing the moment in language and structure that portrays the way he thinks. Shelley attempts to evade the self in Mont Blanc in order to better analyze nature’s transcendence and sublimity, although he cannot altogether evade human influence and perspective in his language while describing the mountain and its surroundings; therefore he concludes that nature’s transcendence relies on the imagination and perspective of the human mind.

Author of the poem “Stanzas, Written in Dejection, near Naples”, Percy Bysshe Shelley remains as one of the most influential poets today. A man on the Romantic Era, Shelley’s reflective poetry earns him the title of the imaginative radical during that time, centering his poetry on restrictions in society and humanity’s place in the universe. (Abrams 428) In his lifetime, Shelley and his poetry exemplified intelligence, logical thinking, earnestness, and curiosity, all qualities which had engendered from a life of studies and wealth. The son of a prosperous squire, Shelley’s life began in England on Saturday, August 4th, 1792 and he remained in his home country until his expulsion from Oxford at the age of 18.

First, in order to gain context for what Shelley’s worldview was at the time, we must indulge in some historical background for an English romantic poet in the 19th century. Most importantly, we must consider the natural events that occurred the year before this was written: The Year Without a Summer. In 1816, England faced hardship as the country was affected by the climate and at mercy to the freezing temperatures. This traumatic event in Shelley’s life plays a huge role in the poem and inspires many themes in the poem such as the transience of life and the beauty and destruction of the natural world.

asks people to be optimistic and advises them to revolt against the rule of tyranny. But Shelley