CR #2
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein employs a host of literary devices to examine the boundaries between God and man, unraveling the core of Romanticism’s assertion of the individual above all else.
Frankenstein, when confronted with his creation, takes the tack of an all-powerful creator, saying that he would “extinguish the spark which [he] so negligently bestowed [upon the creature]” (Shelley 102). He positions himself as God above his creature, using the metaphor of a spark – the spark of life, and the spark of an individual soul – to represent his assumed ability to make and take life at will.
The creature, however, rebukes Frankenstein’s dominion over him as God. While the creature defers to Frankenstein as “natural lord and king” (Shelley 103) in speech, in practice the creature leverages his own personal agency against Frankenstein, bargaining with his creator in order to procure a companion. He makes an allusion to embodying the “fallen angel” (Shelley 103) Lucifer, one who rebelled against God in a gamble for personal wisdom and freedom—both incredibly Romantic ideals. The creature wishes, like Lucifer, to rise above his appointed station and live as he the individual intends.
By forcing this ultimatum against his creator, the creature represents one chained into a certain life station by fate, only to break free of those bonds through sheer will as an individual. Between creature and creator, the struggle between the will of God and the whims of man unfold.
I think this idea of Frankenstein playing God and how the creature if not also Shelley condemns him for assuming this role is one of the compelling themes in Frankenstein. I also find your point about how the creature leverages his Creator for a companion to be a very interesting detail.
Right now I’m not quite sure which close reading method you’re applying. I think that you’re doing an archaeological dig. Still it’s not totally clear what the passage is that you are digging at. Right now it seems more like you’re discussing a general theme for which you give us two places in the text where you see it at work. Still you don’t’ say that much about how it’s at work or how that how affects our understanding of the work in the first place.