Mary Shelley’s novel of Frankenstein to me is a gothic novel. These types of novels have the following characteristics: grotesque, the story can impose fear and the locations can be strange and mysterious. In this essay, I will give my justifications in why I feel this novel takes shape of a gothic story. Grotesque is defined by Webster’s dictionary as “departing markedly from the natural, the expected or the typical” (Webster, page 513).
Victor Frankenstein, who created the monster in the story, he had an attraction for grotesque things.
When he was younger, he liked to analyze “the hidden laws of nature” (Shelley, page 44) and as he grew older he was still intrigued. He created the monster out of body parts from various places (such as graveyards and slaughterhouses).
This monster was not typical. The monster was deformed and scary looking.
The story imposed fear in certain ways. The monster wanted to be loved and feel wanted. But the way he looked sparked fear in his peers. His temper overcame his kindness when people tortured him and mocked him for his looks.
This in turn lead him to murdering Clerval, Justine and Elizabeth. Victor became very afraid of the monster from day one and more so after learning of who did the murders. The weather had something to do with fear in the novel. Elizabeth was murdered on a stormy night, which can impose some fear on the reader. When the monster took his first breath, was on a dreary night in November. The reader could get cold chills trying to imagine these two scenes.
The Term Paper on Monster by Sanyika Shakur
The book Monster by Sanyika Shakur is the story of one gang member’s life of crime growing up in a crime ridden neighbourhood outside Los Angeles. Then known as Kody Scott but given the name Monster by his fellow gang members because of his vicious and ruthless acts of violence, Shakur relates a life of crime that started at adolescence and escalated quickly. He relates to the reader that the only ...
The gothic tale also has strange and mysterious locations. Victor liked darkness and liked visiting vaults as well as the cemetery to visit his dead friends and relatives. The monster was created in a lab in a remote section of Germany. The monster’s companion was being created in Scotland in an abandoned area. Mary Shelley I believe wrote a gothic tale about Frankenstein. It appears that Victor feels like he is responsible for the monsters actions of murder because Victor was the creator.
The gothic tale characteristics came alive in this story. Grotesque was the monster and his appearance. The fear of what the monster did to the important people in Victor’s life as well as how the weather and time of day and year could leave a reader anxious. And the locations in the story were also frightful and strange. Overall, this story shows how one man’s creation could cause so much havoc on other people’s lives as well as his own.
