Frankenstein: Close Reading Post # 2
In the opening passage of chapter nine of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, Victor expresses his innermost feelings of deep sorrow and guilt following Justine’s undeserving execution. On the night of his arrival in Geneva, Victor had begun to suspect that his own monstrous creation had spitefully murdered his younger brother after catching sight of Frankenstein lurking outside of the city gates near the location where his brother was suspected to have been killed. Although he initially refrained from sharing this theory with anyone because he did not want to be deemed eccentric, Victor now falls into a seemingly never-ending depression due to the realization that he may be the cause of two deaths among his close circle of loved ones.
Shelley utilizes vivid imagery to allow readers a glimpse into Victor’s dismal thought processes as he is pondering his current dismal state, “Justine died, she rested, and I was alive. The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more (I persuaded myself) was yet behind.” (84)
Shelley incorporates the rhetorical device of parallelism within the sentence structure of the first line by comparing Justine’s dead state to Victor’s living, breathing self to stress Victor’s realization that Justine has been forced to pay the price for his careless actions. Following this, the author once again parallels Victor’s blood flowing freely with the weight of guilt and sadness he feels in his heart in an antithesis which allows readers to believe that although Victor is still alive and physically able, his spirit and heart are barely surviving. Shelley then skips into another literary device by personifying the term ‘sleep’, which takes on the human action of “fleeing” from Victor’s eyes. This intriguing twist on words captivates the reader’s attention and adds a poetic nuance to the monologue. Finally, she closes the passage with the common use of a simile which compares Victor to an evil spirit in that they are both restless souls harboring concealed thoughts and secrets.
Within the same span of two pages, Shelley continues to describe Victor’s decaying state with another monologue laden with rhetorical and literary devices “I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly – if I except some bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard only when I approached the shore – often, I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities forever.” (85) Within this one sentence alone, Shelley strings an array of parallelisms including a comparison between Victor’s inner restlessness to the harmonious setting surrounding him, his desire to interrupt the peacefulness of the silent lake by drowning in it and possibly committing suicide, and finally having the waters engulf him which would actually serve to bring him peace of mind.
All of these colorful uses of rhetorical, literary, and narrative devices allow readers to fully comprehend and potentially sympathize with Victor as he grasps the full impression of the consequences following the creation of his monster. Shelley conveys Victor’s emotions and feelings to readers in a manner which is impactful and leaves us emotionally invested in the plot and the character of Victor himself who appears to have made one dire, seemingly innocent mistake which has unleashed an unending sequence of horrific events to follow. By allowing Victor to describe the full extent of the guilt and despair he felt following Justine’s execution and the death of his brother, Shelley allows us to also gain a better understanding of Victor’s own personality as well as his moral conscience which has been called into question.
I think you are doing a really good job of trying to focus on the rhetorical devices that Shelley uses. It seems that you are a doing a combination of an archaeological dig and a side by side. It’s more that you’re doing two archaeological digs since you’re not really comparing and contrasting the two passages you look at.
What I’d like to see is a more focused articulation of what the rhetorical devices are doing in and for the text. To be sure you offer a comment/reading on the devices you point out, but you don’t really discuss how these different devices work together as one assemblage in the text. Additionally some times you root the stakes of a device in just getting the reader’s attention. Certainly authors are aware of a need to hold an audience. At the same time it’s very difficult to argue that device holds a reader’s attention since what might get your attention doesn’t necessarily get my attention. You’d have to actually show how this device works to disrupt or play on cognitive desires to make sense or attend to something. Still the question then would be what are the stakes?
For example you say “his intriguing twist on words captivates the reader’s attention and adds a poetic nuance to the monologue.” Your reading here is more of an evaluation of the text “intriguing twist” and “captivat[ing]” and “poetic nuance.” I like the way these descriptions make your own language sound, but I’m not sure what the intriguing twist is or why it matters. How does it affect the way we understand the text.