The Sublime in Frankenstein

Cesarina Negrin
Summer Literature Assignment
Mrs. Ana Lourdes Garcia
English IV Honors G-Block
The Sublime in Frankenstein Throughout the novel, Frankenstein, two forms of the sublime are utilized. Considering all the elements that comprise the sublime: plot, character descriptions, setting, character development, etc., positivity and negativity intertwine to form the building blocks of the sublime. Since the sublime also focuses on the aesthetic side of matters, it embellishes an individual with the belief of witnessing pure greatness in all shapes and sizes. This can be described as a movement of fear or terror, due to astonishment, reverence, or respect. One can deduce that anything positively sublime will lead to one’s amazement with the beauty of nature or life portrayed through literature and anything negatively sublime leaves a human being in awe because the forces of nature can be extremely powerful and sometimes impossible to compete with. In the novel, the most sublime effects were in the moments before and after Victor Frankenstein encounters the monstrosity, he created. He exclaims, “Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life” (138). This portrays the positive sublime through his correlation with his emotions and the components of nature. The beauty of nature he portrayed in this line resembles a clear thought of his interpretation of nature. Regardless, an obscure idea is more affecting than a clear one because a human being’s ignorance of things causes our passions to become excited (Burke p. 4).
When encountering the monster, Victor thought to himself, “I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice among which I had walked with caution; his stature, also as he approached seemed to exceed that of man. I was troubled; a mist came over my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me, but I was quickly restored by the cold gale of the mountains” (138). This moment is where the positive and negative sublime come together to form what is known as terror. Since fear is an apprehension of pain or death, it resembles that of actual pain (Landow p. 2). Therefore, anything terrible is also sublime (Burke p. 3). The forces of nature are impossible to compete with, therefore, his emotions also become affected by this, which makes him say, “I scarcely observed this; rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt” (139). This line sums up the fact that all the admiration which Victor had upon the surroundings in which he was in, had transformed into pure astonishment because he had a precise encounter with the sublime. It involved the meeting of the subjective-internal (emotions) and the objective-external (nature) (Landow p. 3).
Victor’s overwhelmed emotions led him to rationalize the consequences of his creation. The two liberties director of the film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Kenneth Branagh, took increased the overall story’s sense of the sublime. This is due to the fact that when Victor encounters the monster for the second time in Geneva, he is overpowered by the creature and is forced to meet him at the Sea of Ice as indicated by the monster. This results from the creature’s monstrous presence, Victor is astonished and feels as if there is no other alternative but to meet with the monster as he had requested. Thus, incorporating power into the picture, signifying that power is the capital source of the sublime and that it is the source from which energy derives since the terror gained from power is the common stock of everything that is sublime (Burke p. 7). On the other hand, beauty is also incorporated into the film. At the end, when Victor is being burnt after his death, the monster decides to join his creator in his burning. This is an appropriate example of beauty because it basically blurs the viewer’s clear view of the sublime and merely focuses it on the obscurity being portrayed in this scene. The obscure derived from the fact that although Victor’s creation had despised him, he still came to his creator’s bed side and realized the fact that that was his father. Regardless of the suffering which he had endured, he still owed him the reverence and respect he deserved. This idea is what makes the viewer ignorant at first, but then once this scene is portrayed; it deserves all of one’s admiration and leads to one’s passions being excited.
Throughout Frankenstein, there were many forms of the sublime, especially, the positive and negative forms of it. These forms came together to provide a firm foundation of the author’s message to the reader. This message consists of noticing and analyzing the various concepts of the sublime and being able to relate it to Victor’s creation. Just as the sublime is able to provide the reader with amazement by using beautiful and colorful forms of writing, it can also provide the reader with monstrous and vague forms of writing, which will most definitely leave the reader anxious for more. An obscure idea always ignites the passions of a reader. It is without a doubt that obscurity has a more powerful effect on humans than clarity.

Works Cited
Burke, Edmund. "The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Age: Topic 1:
Texts and Contexts." The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Age: Topic 1: Texts and Contexts. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Aug. 2013.
Landow, George P. "Eighteenth-Century Theories of the Sublime." Eighteenth-Century Theories of the Sublime. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Aug. 2013.
Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Perf. Kenneth Branagh and Robert De Niro.
TriStar Pictures, 1994. Film.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Maurice Hindle. Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus.
London: Penguin, 2003. Print.

Cited: Burke, Edmund. "The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Age: Topic 1: Texts and Contexts." The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Age: Topic 1: Texts and Contexts. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Aug. 2013. Landow, George P. "Eighteenth-Century Theories of the Sublime." Eighteenth-Century Theories of the Sublime. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Aug. 2013. Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Perf. Kenneth Branagh and Robert De Niro. TriStar Pictures, 1994. Film. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Maurice Hindle. Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.