Chapter five of ‘Frankenstein’ is crucial to creating a sense of horror in the novel. How does Shelley achieve this?
The gothic horror novel published in 1818 called ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’ consists of the major themes of life and death, love and sex and also how man challenges god. The alternative name for this novel is called “The Modern Day Prometheus”, the author who wrote this was aged 19 when Mary Shelley wrote this, many people was surprised to learn that a young girl would ever write a novel as unique and horrendous as this.
Through-out the story of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s life is portrayed thought-out the events in several chapters, for example as Mary Shelley’s mother died from giving birth; she gained inspiration from this and reflected this onto the novel by using such techniques, causes an unusual yet unique aspect, coincidentally when Mary Shelley gave birth her baby died in the process, since this was the number one killer in the 18th century. This was lead to believe that the thought of reincarnation/ re-birth was immediately present in the mind of Mark Shelley.
Chapter 5 is the most crucial chapter as this is the pivotal point of the novel and most important shows Victors scientific breakthrough of the two years he spent obsessed with his experiment also through-out the chapter Victor deals with the reality of the monster that he created, rather than what he imagined it to be, by using words such as “demonical corpse”.
The extensive use of describing the weather helps create the atmosphere needed to create the initial idea of horror; “dreary night of November” makes the reader interact with the scene as it is very easy to imagine the sound and feel of a cold night. Also an image is presented on the first paragraph. This creates a reminder of God and religion.
As Victor says “His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful”, this shows the contrast between what Victor expected to achieve and what.
