Notes from class discussions:
Chapter 21- Reader is shown more gothic elements again, theme of romanticism drifts away.
Do sympathise:
Chapter 21- Reader is shown more gothic elements again, theme of romanticism drifts away.
- 'young man' 'ten o'clock' ' dark night'- sets gothic imagery gives context.
- Young man of 25 found dead on the shore, strangled, with black finger marks, as in class we discussed shows the creatures corruption of inmnocence; death to a 'handsome young man' by the hands of the murderer Creature.
- Victor feels 'parched with horror, nor can...reflect on that moment without shuddering and agony' as he realises the body is Henry Clerval's - Victor faints. Then lays in a fever for two months, 'close to death'. Melodramatic reaction to what the monster warned him would happen. Coping mechanism with the harshness of reality, going into an unfit state allows Victor to block the world around him.
- - Romantic description of death. It 'snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doting parents'. Also relates to his own mother, who'se happiness rested on Victor's union with Elizabeth.
- 'I was doomed to live' and 'I am sorry that i am still alive to feel this mysery and horror'. 'dream' is repeated constantly in chapter 21 to show victor's confused state of mind. He believes the horrid past events to be all a bad dream, and wishes they were just that when he awakes to find them a reality. Take a Freudian intepreation of this developing dream analysis techniques.
- 'self satisfaciton' as mentioned in the first volume repeated throughout the novel 'My father...but where is he, why does he not hasten to me?'
- 'a fatality seems to persue you' - irony - 'a gloomy and black melancholy...Clerval was forever before me, ghastly and murdered'. Link to Lady Macbeth's delusions/dreams, or macbeth's ghost of banquo
- Victor's nightmares aboard the ship to Havre-De-Grace about the creature coming to kill him are negated by his father waking him up. Victor finds a 'sense of security' by his father's side.
- "may increase your miseries tenfold by being an obstackle to your wishes." makes him more miserable as she dies.
- "tear me from a glimpse of happiness."- death of Elizabeth knows she will die.
- "the apple is already eaten"- Paradise lost references to Eve having the apple, committing sin, Shelleys use of biblical references.
- "A thousand times would I have shed my own blood, drop by drop, to have saved their live...sacrafice the whole human race." references to Macbeth as well- the motif of blood appearing creates a dramatic atmosphere.
- "I will be with you on your wedding-night!"
- mentioning mountains brings back romantic as well as gothic elements of peace and dramatical setting.
Do sympathise:
- loosing his loved ones.
- emotional connection with natures beauty. "the scene of the busy heavens, rendered still busier by the restless waves ..." the weather affects the mood of Frankensteins stae of mind, the transition from moods.
- shows remorse.
- Bought down upon himslef for the creation of the monster.
- Mellodrmatic the body of Elizabeth- "my love, my wife, so lately living, so dear so worthy."
- Lack of responsibility of controlling the monster.
- ending of the chapter- " I broke from the house angry and disturbed... other mode of action"- ignorance.
- Victor tells walton about the monsters travels, starts in the graveyard in Geneva at his families grave.
- Asks Walton to killl the monster.
- Frankenstein is feulled by revenge.
- Shelleys use of Location in the chaoter as well as the letters
- Walton's contuation- shows letters havent been completely finished, readers question the reliability of the novel and points of views.
- References to paradise lost- "like the arch angel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell."
- "passion" used repetitively.
