Frankenstein - Quotes and Analysis

Phrases to describe where Victor created the Creature

"Workshop of filthy creation"

"Dissecting room"

"Slaughter-house" - Juxtaposition of life and death - need both, shouldn't interfere with natural order

Victor blaming destiny

"Her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction" - personification and erratic behaviour

Victor usurping the role of women

"The moon gazed in my midnight labours" - personification - moon's cycle links to menstrual cycle

Victor misinterpreting the Creature's hug

"One hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me"

Frankenstein's horror-filled description when he first sees the Creature's final form

"His yellow [...] his teeth of a pearly whiteness [...] his shriveled complexion and straight black lips" - Imagery and asyndeton - Contrast between appearance - Vic only values Creature's appearance - foreshadows future treatment of Creature

Epithets used to describe the Creature

"Wretch," "Demon" and "Fiend"

Victor thinking about himself during Justine's trial (remorse)

"The fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forgo their hold" - metaphor and animalistic imagery

How Justine's confessor treated her innocent self

"He threatened and menaced until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was. He threatened excommunication and Hell fire in my last moments" - religious imagery, repetition and mirror of Creature and Victor's/society's treatment of him.

About how Victor's father arrived to his grieving mother

"He came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl." - Simile - saviour and protector, attracted to her vulnerability

Victor's possessiveness over Elizabeth

Says he looked at her as "Mine - mine to protect, love and cherish" - epizeuxis and triplet - objectification of women

Safie's objectification by Felix

"Jewel" and How her father "Possessed a treasure that would fully reward his toil" - semantic field of valuables - epithet? "Reward" - exoticism

Creature's innocence and child-like experiences (2 quotes)

"A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me" - Sensory imagery

"A stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I was obliged to shut my eyes." - Newborn imagery

How Creature refers to himself (2 quotes)

"My form is a filthy type of yours" (link to Adam and Eve) - says man was created "After [God's] own image"

"I was wretched, helpless and lone" - Triplet, uses epithet of "wretch" that Victor uses (internalises epithet)

Creature's transformation into a monster at the DeLacey's cottage

"A fierce wind arose from the woods" - Pathetic fallacy (unrestrained emotional state of Creature) - "Produced a kind of insanity in [his] spirits that burst all bounds of reason and reflection"

How Victor warns the pursuit of knowledge to Walton and another quote for his obsessive attitudes to pursuing knowledge

Describes it as being a "Serpent's sting" to him - Allusion to Adam and Eve and temptation of knowledge

He suggests he was "Deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge" - Metaphor - sought knowledge from a young age; "Smitten" - intimate attachment to this thirst.

5 allusions the novel uses

1) Milton's Paradise Lost - Adam and Eve's 'original sin', one version presents God as tyrannical and portrays Satan in a sympathetic manner (link to Creature and Victor trying to 'play God')

2) Goethe's Faust - sells soul to devil to obtain concealed knowledge - warns of ignoring ethical concerns when pursuing knowledge (link to Victor)

3) Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner - sea captain kills an albatross, which was considered a sign of God, causing his crew to all die. warns against defying God and nature.

4) Prometheus Myth -Prometheus stealing fire from Zeus for mankind - juxtaposition of Prometheus as being a benevolent creator vs Victor being a selfish one

3) The Sorrows of Young Werther - Werther becomes obsessed with unrequited love, eventually committing suicide at end - teaches Creature about love - gives him an obsessive view of it - link to wanting a female Creature and his views towards women, e.g. Safie

Narrative structure of novel

Chinese-box narrative - numerous perspectives - Creature's perspectives inform us of Victor's unreliableness