Frankenstein - Nature and Setting

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  • Created by: Ellie
  • Created on: 01-05-13 14:24
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  • Nature and Setting
    • Nature and the sublime
      • Alternates between a Romantic sublime and a darker Gothic sublime
        • Romantic: Awe-inspiring and overwhelmingly beautiful. Makes reader feel uplifted and healed
        • Gothic: decline and decay, inhuman and cold
    • Nature and Victor
      • He repeatedly shuns humanity and seeks nature for health and relaxation and to strengthen spirits
        • "sublime and magnificent scene afford me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving"
        • "They elevated me from all littleness of feeling and although they did not remove my grief, they subdued and tranquillised it"
    • Nature and the creature
      • Displayed in two ways; oppressive and painful but also tranquil and healing
        • "I remember a strong light pressed upon my nerves so I was obliged to shut my eyes"
        • "The light became more and more oppressive to me"
        • "A gentle light stole over the heavens, and gave me a sensation of pleasure"
        • "Beheld a radiant rise from among the trees"
      • Nature has been a parent to him and taught him how to live... because VF never did
    • Nature and structure
      • Shelley prefers to use metaphors of natural imagery
        • "I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources"
      • She asserts the superiority of nature over man-made objects
        • Good and innocent characters are associated with nature
        • Man-made creature is hideous and associated with despair and violence
    • Pathetic Fallacy
      • "It was on a dreary night in November... the rain pattered dismally against the panes"
      • Foreshadows the rest of the novel, the monster was born in darkness, this shows how for the remainder of the novel he lives in the shadow of pain
    • The Arctic
      • Reference to the ninth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno
        • "the ninth circle of hell... all the sinners are stuck in frozen water up to their shoulders neck or eyes"
          • The theme of betrayal is potent in the novel. The monster betrays VF and VF betrays God.
      • Contrast between VF telling his tale in frozen wasteland and monster telling his next to a warm fire in an abandoned cottage

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Nature and setting are both key when studying the Gothic genre and this mind map begins to look at these key features in Frankenstein; the resource could be enhanced by considering the other novels you are being examined on and how they can be linked to the points already made.

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