Supernatural Events In Frankenstein

Frankenstein Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, is narrated by three main characters who tell the story of the life of the Creature. Each narrator gives their own aspects as to what makes up Frankenstein as a Gothic novel. Together, the three men’s stories make up an outstanding Gothic novel. A Gothic novel uses supernatural events that are not infrequently explained at some point or another by science, forebodes terror through the use of physical, or even, psychological violence, and explores the nightmares of the reader’s mind. The novel uses one man’s, Victor Frankenstein‘s, yearning to rid the world death as the basis as to why the Creature is even thought of in the first place. Victor Frankenstein’s love for the arts of science
is unmatched by anyone else in the novel for “none but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science” (47). Therefore, Victor Frankenstein’s love of science is the reason such a being is even in the realms of a possibility. Victor uses rather morbid materials to build his creature, some namely being human bones, from the dissecting room and slaughter houses, and other instruments of life. As the novel progresses, the Creature comes to life and not even its maker, Victor Frankenstein, can look into it’s horrifying eyes. Victor states how “God in pity made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours” (154). One could not blame Victor for feeling so negative towards his creation. The Creature looks like something out of a nightmare standing eight feet tall with pale yellowish skin, black hair, disproportionate limbs, and white teeth covered by black lips that gave him the appearance of death while actually in a body full of life. Eventually the Creature becomes aware of it’s hideousness and realizes no human will ever want to associate themselves with a monster like him. As a result, the Creature asks of Victor that since “I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me, but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me” (171). Half-filled with pity but mostly because of what the Creature might do to him if he did not cooperate, Victor makes the Creature a mate. Victor creates this monster hoping it will make up for the many lives in his family that are already lost due to his first creation. The female creature only lives briefly until Victor kills her, consequently breaking his own mission, because he is afraid that a race of monsters would take over. Having one man with so much, Victor Frankenstein, lose the one thing he truly loves and everyone around him is the epitome of a Gothic novel. From his goal to rid the world of death to ridding the world of the Creature that kills anybody considered a threat, Victor accomplished few and far between the tasks he set out to do.