Frankenstein

Frankenstein

The novel Frankenstein was written in by Mary Shelley. She came up with the story in 1817 whilst on holiday with her husband Percy Shelly a great poet, Lord Byon another famous poet. It was Byon who suggested that they each write a horror story of some kind. Mary Shelley went to bed that night without knowing of what to write. That night she must have had a pretty terrible night mare as she dreamt up the whole story line. The novel was first published in 1818. In my essay I intend to write about how Shelly has terrified and shocked audiences for nearly 200 years.

Merry Shelley uses effective descriptive language to horrify her audience. This is apparent when she describes the monster and its creator in chapter 5. Shelley’s description of Frankenstein monster provokes fear and revulsion in the reader because the discription is unusual and quite disgusting. You can see this when Shelley uses the phrase “watery eyes that.... “, This creates a very powerful image in the readers imagination and shows unlike Frankenstein original ideas, the monster is horrific and quite unnatural.

Shelley reinforces the horrific state of the monster by using juxtaposition when comparing the bodily features of the monster, “his hair was a lustrous black and flowing”, and this is then contrasted with,”formed a more horrid...” These quotes are significant as they make the reader think more about what victor wanted the monster to turn out like and what it finally did turn out like.

Merry Shelley uses a variety of descriptive techniques throughout the book especially in chapter 23. Merry Shelley uses pathetic fallacy to create and image a powerful image in the readers mind. Shelley creates a happy and romantic setting in the first paragraph, “enjoying the transitory light”, this tells the reader that there having a lovely time, she uses sibilance to create a smoothly flowing sentence. Merry Shelley takes no time in quickly hinting that everything is all about to go horribly wrong. “Their black outlines”, “black” is considered as a fore boding colour this creates a foreshowing image in the readers mind and that makes the reader think something bad is going to happen next. The second paragraph is where Merry Shelley makes the reader fully understand that things are turning bad, “great violence in the west” the word “violence” is relevant because it’s one of the themes in the books as well as been a major theme in this chapter.

Also in chapter 23 Merry Shelley uses a Variety of techniques such as personification “The moon had reached her summit in the heavens and was beginning to descend”, using the “moon” is effective as it adds to the horror factor as it’s a gothic horror convention, Merry Shelley also refers to the moon being up in the heavens and then falling, as the opposite to heaven is hell she suggests the moon is falling to hell which relates to the bad things that are about to happen.

Throughout the book Merry Shelley uses negative connotations and horror conventions she uses words like “terror” and “fear” “dull moon” yellow” as these words are generally found in all horror books.

Whilst explaining the monsters features in chapter 5,