We can also think of the creature in Frankenstein as being an example of personification. He is, after all, a collection of inanimate objects, body parts that were once dead. Even more specifically, the creature could be an example of anthropomorphism because he is a walking, talking, feeling object.
The story has had an influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films. It is arguably considered the first fully realized science fiction novel.
What is an example of personification for a monster?
The Monster crawled through the winding streets groaning as it chugged uphill. Its yellow eyes dimly peered out of the driving rain and he slowly turned to face the oncoming traffic. Its heart began to falter and he screeched to a halt. Personification is giving an object or a place human characteristics.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein falls under two different genres of literature: Gothic novel and science fiction. As a Gothic novel, Frankenstein embodies many of the setting and plot elements associated with the genre.
Frankenstein's creature has been interpreted as symbolic of the revolutionary thought which had swept through Europe in the 1790s, but had largely petered out by the time Shelley wrote the novel.
Everything you need to know to read "Frankenstein" - Iseult Gillespie
Does Mary Shelley use personification?
There are many literary devices in Mary Shelley's gothic novel Frankenstein. A literary device is when an author hints at more significant ideas, themes, or meanings in their writing. Both figurative language and personification are examples of literary devices that Shelley uses in her story.
Frankenstein is an allegory, a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. Victor Frankenstein's creation of the Monster is an allegory for the creation story from the Book of Genesis, in which God creates Adam.
Shelley's full title, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is the first allusion in the book. This allusion is to the Greek myth of Prometheus, a titan who gave humanity to human beings, enabling them to learn and create. Both Victor and Prometheus are creators in their own way.
Although Frankenstein is usually characterized as a gothic romance, it is more appropriately understood as satire that exposes and ridicules the cultural imbalance between the masculine and feminine.
The Monster personifies knowledge as something that "clings" to a mind. Of course, knowledge isn't a living thing that is capable of holding onto anything, but someone's awareness of knowledge can feel so overpowering and inescapable that it's as if knowledge were alive.
Examples of figurative language in the novel include: Personification: When an author gives human-like qualities to an idea or an object. One example of personification from Frankenstein is: ''He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. ''
What is the literary significance of Frankenstein?
In the mid-twentieth century, critics began to recognize the importance of Frankenstein as a cautionary tale on the dangers of scientific knowledge and now view it as a progenitor of science fiction.
Frankenstein has become a classic not only because of its of pioneering theme of reanimating the dead, but also because of the interactions between its two main characters: the young scientist Victor Frankenstein and the creature that he creates, who remains nameless throughout the novel.
Why does Mary Shelley use allusion in Frankenstein?
Mary Shelley uses allusions in Frankenstein to help the reader better understand her characters and themes. She uses allusions from works such as the Bible, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Dante's Divine Comedy to help the reader connect her characters to known characters and themes from these works.
What imagery does the author use in Frankenstein? Mary Shelley uses imagery throughout her novel. She uses vivid descriptions of the Swiss Alps, the ice that traps Walton's ship, and most importantly, of Frankenstein's creature.
Victor Frankenstein is consumed by guilt almost constantly as the book progresses. Whenever something causes him to become exceptionally guilty, he becomes ill. The illness allows him to temporarily escape from any responsibility he has and also to talk about his guilt, soothing his conscience.
Ever since Sedgwick established Frankenstein as a “'classic'” novel of homosexual panic in homophobia's quintessential genre, “the paranoid Gothic,” it is a commonplace of literary criticism to understand both Victor Frankenstein and his Creature as queer and ashamed about it (Between Men 91, 16).
The Bride of Frankenstein is a fictional character first introduced in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus and later in the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein. In the film, the Bride is played by Elsa Lanchester.
Frankenstein is a Gothic novel in that it employs mystery, secrecy, and unsettling psychology to tell the story of Victor Frankenstein's doomed monster.
Instead of freeing humanity from the terror of mortality, he delivers his family into early and violent deaths. Victor dreams of founding a new species that would bless him as a father and creator. Instead, his creature curses rather than blesses him for abandoning him to a lonely life.
Victor's monster represents the hubris of thinking one can replace nature. The Creature is a grotesque creation which begins as Adam symbolically, but eventually sees more of Satan in himself.
Frankenstein is no different: it asks questions about religion but does not reject it. When Victor Frankenstein's creature comes to life, it terrifies him, and he immediately abandons it. The creature, forced to learn to survive on his own, develops a sense of self that is informed by what he encounters in the world.
