In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley tells the story of two monsters, one with a boundless ambition that causes both to suffer the consequences. Through diction, figurative language, and juxtaposed imagery, the character of Victor Frankenstein is established as an eager, studious man with a god-complex who desires to defy the laws of nature. Frankenstein’s “breathless eagerness” (26-27) and “unremitting ardor” pushed him to become the real monster on the inside (18). The specific diction throughout the story highlights the growth of his hubris and god-complex. When life and death are the “ideal bounds” that he wishes to “first break through,” it is seen how much he wants to control life just like a god. He longs to be a “creator and source”
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Figurative language also helps develop how he turns into the unnatural person that he is. Frankenstein's path to monstrosity is due to his uncontrollable, destructive ambition which urged him forward “like a hurricane” (2). As he desires to “pursue nature to her hiding places,” he symbolically prides himself in the fact that he discovers more than any human ever has. Furthermore, eyes are metaphorically used as a demonstration of Frankenstein’s character, which is fitting because the eyes are the windows to one’s soul. At the creation of his creature, his eyes “start[ed] from his sockets” (46) seeing his masterpiece come alive, and later his “‘eyes swim with the remembrance” of that moment (32). Although this novel is rich with imagery, the use of light and dark along with life and death imagery are especially used to portray the good and evil in Frankenstein. Though he thinks he brings “light into [the] dark world,” (5-6) he collects materials for his experiment in “the unhallowed damps of the grave” (29-30) while trying to “bestow animation upon lifeless matter” (12). This imagery is used to convey Frankenstein misconception that he works for good when he really creates
Figurative language also helps develop how he turns into the unnatural person that he is. Frankenstein's path to monstrosity is due to his uncontrollable, destructive ambition which urged him forward “like a hurricane” (2). As he desires to “pursue nature to her hiding places,” he symbolically prides himself in the fact that he discovers more than any human ever has. Furthermore, eyes are metaphorically used as a demonstration of Frankenstein’s character, which is fitting because the eyes are the windows to one’s soul. At the creation of his creature, his eyes “start[ed] from his sockets” (46) seeing his masterpiece come alive, and later his “‘eyes swim with the remembrance” of that moment (32). Although this novel is rich with imagery, the use of light and dark along with life and death imagery are especially used to portray the good and evil in Frankenstein. Though he thinks he brings “light into [the] dark world,” (5-6) he collects materials for his experiment in “the unhallowed damps of the grave” (29-30) while trying to “bestow animation upon lifeless matter” (12). This imagery is used to convey Frankenstein misconception that he works for good when he really creates