Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is a story of fear and melancholy. The mixture of these emotions allows readers to be highly fascinated with such monster story that Frankensteinbecomes a story of all times. This analysis reveals how Mary Shelly wrote a text that would reflect the kind of feelings that every reader will be most familiar.
Fear is the greatest emotion that every human can ever feel. It entails power that man can be capable of either doing everything he could in order to overcome it or do nothing at all and just become part of the emotion itself. It crawls to the deepest of every being that the only way to deal with it is to face it or run away from it. Monsters have been the means of literary texts to project terror and horror in its societal readers. Frankensteinis considered one of the hideous monsters ever considered in the context of literature. It has been a symbol to many great concepts of fear and horror. The reading society has always become vary amazed with stories that are considered to be out of ordinary. The monster that Victor has created has manifested fear in the light of providing the idea of an ugly and hideous feature of a monster. There was simply so scary in the physical features of this Frankenstein monster. Moreover, there is fear in this monster as it is capable of taking away a life of the others. His strength and even his hugeness can take away any life that can be equated to the many fears of a goliath or a giant being. Most of all, the most frightful concept about the Frankenstein monster is that it has showed a relatively very fearful capability of man to create such hideous being. It is undeniable that the book was as well inspired from the concepts of Charles Darwin and as the theory of evolution permits the idea that man came from apes, Shelley’s monster can confirm to the idea that like man, monsters can be created in the ways that man are capable of doing so. This vey unnatural proposition can thus create fear in each one of us—the fear of ourselves creating something out of ordinary.
Melancholic emotions brought by longing of love and knowledge also add to the story of Shelly. Frankenstein is all about the thirst for a fatherly affection and god-like power of knowledge. This is certainly evident as the theme of the book can as well contain not only the monstrosity of Frankenstein but also the deep thirst he has for the love of his father and his creator, Victor. His asking of another monster to become a bride would just prove to be the sense of yearning of companionship. There serve to be an appeal of the author towards the attitude towards the monster indicating that it is not only terror that he brings but even as monstrous as he is, the monster still yearned for love and affection.
Frankenstein is inspired from the Gothic literature and the extraordinary life that its author has endured. Mary Shelley’s being an orphan to a mother and constantly seeking for the approval of her father created this work of art in the manner of projecting fear and dangerous love. It was even the monstrous love affair and her eloping of six weeks in Europe with a married man Percy Shelley that also created this terrifying novel of all times.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein would surely continue to live generation after generation as the novel would always depict the stories of thirst for knowledge and affection that everyone in this world have never fail to feel. Frankenstein would continue to be one of those characters in the world of literature that would reflect and signify the monsters that humans will be capable of being.
Works Cited
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus. London: Thomas Davidson. 1863. Print.