A Watermarked Dream

A Watermarked Dream

“Dreams are often the most profound when they seem the most crazy.” A quote from the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud states that usually, the most ridiculous and off-the-wall dreams are the most symbolic and have the most meaning behind them. Mary Shelley said that her ideas for the book Frankenstein just “came to her in a dream one night.” This may very well be true considering her tragic past and scarred mind not only as a child but also as a growing adult. This “dream” starts out with Robert Walton on a journey to the North Pole. On this journey, as he and his crew are traveling by boat, they come across a weary traveler that was near death. Later we learn that this man is Victor Frankenstein and he is chasing Frankenstein around the arctic for what seems to be all of eternity. This furthers the meaning of the books subtitle “A Modern Prometheus”, where Prometheus is doomed to have his regenerating liver eaten away every day for all of time, Victor is doomed to chase his monster Frankenstein around forever.

This entire story seems to show a lot of repressed feelings that Mary has toward her family and her life problems. Mary Shelley had four kids and only one of them lived to adulthood. Mary said she had dreams of her child not actually being dead but was just cold, and when she rubbed him by the fire, he breathed life again. Victor Frankenstein did not have any children and seemed to be obsessed more with creating a life alone than using the more “traditional” method. In creating Frankenstein, Victor left Frankenstein motherless and alone to fend for himself. Percy Shelley was a very avid studier and practitioner of science and, particularly, chemistry when he was in college. He conducted many experiments in college and was said to have had numerous conversations with his lifelong friend Lord Byron about a corpse being re-animated using galvanism. A lot of critics believe that Percy was the roll model and the basis for Victor Frankenstein. Just as Frankenstein never had a mother, Mary’s mother died ten days after she was born. This seems to mirror how Mary felt when she was sent away