Sympathy in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein Essay -- Mary Shelley Frankens

Sympathy in bloody shame Shelleys FrankensteinIn her novel, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley employs some(prenominal) innovativeliterary techniques to invoke feelings of sympathy for the monster. Sympathy is created by the author both by making the readers pity themonsters loathsome introduction and by leading them to infer hisviolent and cruel actions. We pity the creature because of the way heis treated by mankind and we can identify with his feelings andreactions and understand why he behaves as he does. Shelley usesdifferent narrators throughout the novel and the reader sympathiseswith the views of these people to differing degrees. The languageused when describing the physical appearance of the monster and hisfeelings is actually strong and evocative. The settings and motifs withwhich the monster is associated are very dramatic and add to oursympathy for his lonely existence. The monsters use of rhetoric iseffective and his speech is eloquent, this is a strong technique bywhich th e reader is displace in. Commentators have often compared themonster to Adam, or to a newborn baby, this challenges the readersview of him. some other technique employed by the author is to lead thereader to draw parallels between the characters of Victor Frankensteinand his creation.The novel is told from the viewpoint of various narrators, a techniqueexplored by Emily Bront in Wuthering Heights, which was popular withwriters in the nineteenth century. In Frankenstein, like in WutheringHeights, the first narrator is an outsider - Robert Walton - but asthe novel progresses the narrative moves in closer - to Victor, thento the monster. Each narrator contributes their own feelings anddescriptions of both Victor and the mo... ...r the period that Mary Shelley waswriting in challenging the social conventions of the time. Parallels are drawn between the anguish of the monster and the grieffelt by Victor Frankenstein. These strong emotions are portrayedagainst some of the harshest, mo st desolate scenery in the world. Thecontrast between these settings and the warm and pleasant scenes whenVictor is with his friends and family only serve to emphasise themonsters loneliness and isolation. Images of light and dark, heavenand hell, warmth and cold, apprize and ice, high and low, joy and despaircan be traced throughout the novel. All of these bring to mindMiltons Paradise Lost. The novel shows evidence of Mary Shelleysinterest in scientific ideas of the time, a time when the conversationof intelligent, well-educated people often turned to recent scientificdevelopments.