Frankenstein

Chapter 5 of the book is important because Victor succeeds in bringing his creation, an eight-foot man, to life in November of his second year. The Gothic elements that can be found in this chapter are the grotesque (description of the monster’s features), the eerie environment (Victor’s lab at 1 a.m.), the undead quality, and some type of psychic communication (Victor’s feeling of being followed). Also, this chapter builds fear in the reader, another big part of Gothic writing.

The monster now begins to take shape, and Victor describes his creation in full detail as “beautiful” yet repulsive with his “yellow skin,” “lustrous black, and flowing” hair, and teeth of “pearly whiteness.” Victor describes the monster’s eyes, considered the windows upon the soul, as “watery eyes, that seemed almost the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.”

Here Shelley contrasts God’s creation of Adam to Victor’s creation of the monster. Victor sees his creation as beautiful and yet repugnant, versus the creation story taken from the Bible in which God sees his creation of Adam as “good.”

In a distressed mental state, Victor falls into bed, hoping to forget his creation. He dreams of wandering the streets of Ingolstadt and seeing Elizabeth through the haze of the night. During the dream, Elizabeth then turns into his mother, Caroline, whom he pictures being held in his own arms. While holding his mother, he then sees worms start to crawl out of the folds of her burial shroud to touch him. He awakes from the nightmare and goes directly to the laboratory to see his creation.

In the morning, Victor wanders the streets, alone with his conscience. Shelley layers into the novel a passage from Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which makes a reference to a person who wanders the streets with a demon or fiend following him.