Frankenstein :: essays research papers

Mary Shelleys Frankenstein opens with Robert Waltons ship surrounded in ice, and Robert Walton watching, along with his crew, as a huge, malformed "traveller" on a dog sled vanished across the ice. The next morning, the fog lifted and the ice separated and they found a man, that was almost frozen lying on a slab of floating ice. By giving him hot soup and rubbing his body with brandy, the crew restored him to his health. A few old age later he was able to accost and the stranger, Victor Frankenstein, seemed distressed to learn that a sled had been sighted prior to his rescue from the ice. Then he began to tell his story.     Frankenstein said that he had been an only nestling and during a expedition with his parents, his mother found a peasant and his wife with five hungry babies. The peasants children were dark-skinned, except for one little girl. Frankensteins mother decided to adopt the little girl. Victor and his adopted sister, Elizabeth, came to l ove one another, even though they were very different in temperament and nature. Elizabeth "busied herself with sideline the aerial creations of poets," while Frankenstein preferred scientific knowledge "it was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn ... the physical secrets of the world." After the death of his mother when he was seventeen, Frankenstein departed for the University of Inglostadt. Frankenstein grew intensely interested in the phenomena of the human body and he explored the processes of death and decay, and became infatuated with the idea of creating human life itself.           After several days and darknesss of laboring, he succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter." Frankenstein set out to create a superior life story being, hoping to eventually discover a formula for eternal life. In his rese arch Frankenstein determinedly collected human remains from charnel-houses and cemeteries. Then, "on a dreary night of November ... I beheld the accomplishment of my toils" an eight-foot monster. Applying electricity to the "lifeless matter" before him, Frankenstein saw "the dull yellow eye of the creature open it breathed hard, and convulsive crusade agitated its limbs." And at the result of his creation coming to life, Frankenstein was appalled. "Breathless horror and disgust filled my heart." He thought that he had created a freak. Exhausted, Frankenstein fell into a deep sleep, seeking a "few moments of forgetfulness.