Scarica Appunti su Frankenstein e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Frankenstein The origin of the novel goes back to a rainy day where Byron bet who could write the best ghost story. That night Mary had a nightmare about a monster made by pieces of corpses and so she thought that what had scared her so much would have frightened the others too. Theories of Rousseau and Locke The novel is also based on Rousseau’s theory of the noble savage, when the man is good but because of society he becomes evil. In fact, the monster when he is born is good and innocent, but because of people's prejudices against him he becomes cruel and evil. Another principle is Locke's theory of learning through experiences, in fact the creature's education comes from the experiences he makes. Frankenstein as the “Modern Prometheus” The novel is called Modern Prometheus and in fact it is connected to the myth of Prometheus, who challenged the Gods and gave man fire. In this way, Frankenstein challenged nature and created life from the dead. Frankenstein is a romantic version of the dream of the creation of artificial life and it is both a philosophical romance and a gothic tale for two reasons: 1. There's the Romantic interest in science 2. It contains the horror of Gothic tales Theme of the “outcast of society” The story can be read in two ways: ● Frankenstein is a scientific updated version of Faust: Faust wants to overcome man’s limitations and acquire God-like power, taking life in his own hands; like Frankenstein did with the life of his creature ● The monster created by Frankenstein is a symbol of Romantic's interest in isolation from society: the monster is like the other romantic dark heroes, who were outcasts of society because of the social prejudices against them. The theme of the double We have the theme of the double between Frankenstein and Walton: they both are overreachers, because they want to overcome humans' actions. Frankenstein wants to create life from the dead and Walton wants to reach the North pole, these are both extreme ambitions. Also Frankenstein and the Creature are complementary characters: the happiness of one of them is the suffering of the other. This means that when one is happy the other is in pain, because the happiness of one of them is the source of despair of the other one. The style of the novel The novel is written in the epistolary form. We have three narrators in the story: 1. An English explorer in the arctic regions, Robert Walton, writers to his sister in England about how he saved a Swiss scientist, Dr Frankenstein 2. Frankenstein himself tells the story of his life experiments: this an autobiographical account 3. A report by the monster himself tells the reasons for his monstrous behavioutr 1- The creation of the monster The story is told in first person by Frankenstein. The setting is typical of the gothic novels: it is a rainy night of November and we know this because of Frankenstein's description of the time. Other than the place we also have a vivid description of the Creature's physical appearance. MAIN THEME: Frankenstein's feelings towards his experiment. He worked hard for this experiment, because he worked on it for "the past two years". This means that it is really important to him and he can't wait to finish it. However, when he looks at the corpse he starts to think that it's horrible and he feels a deep sense of anxiety in his body, because he realizes that what he created is completely unnatural. When the Creature finally opens his eyes, Frankenstein is totally terrified. He can't stay in the same room as the Monster, so he goes to his room and tries to sleep. This doesn't help him because he dreams about his dead mother (REMINDER OF MARY'S MOM) as a horrible skeleton, so he wakes up scared again. As soon as he opens his eyes he sees his Creature looking at him, the Monster tries to speak but Frankenstein doesn't hear him and runs away in fear and spends the night in his backyard, terrified by what he created. 2- The outcast The story is told in first person, from the Creature's point of view. In this passage we can see better the influence of Rousseau’s theory about the noble savage. In the first part we have the description of a beautiful natural setting. The Creature settles here because, after running away from Frankenstein, he decides to spend his life alone, searching for a lover.
