A Dark and Stormy Night: The Role of Weather in Literature
When thinking of the key attributes of a well-rounded and timeless novel, the mind typically drifts towards the personalities and interrelations of the characters within it. With their thoughtful dialogue, moving discoveries, and endless adventures, it makes complete sense that the main characters of a novel exist to many as the focus and the heart of the story. Much like the man behind the curtain in the well-known story the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, however, there is a lesser-known yet extremely vital force at play. Weather, in all of its forms, is something that has remained one of the crucial building blocks needed in the process of creating a timeless story. Weather can be used as …show more content…
The gloomy image that is attached to the idea of Victor Frankenstein piddling away at a soon-to-be living being as lightning cracks in the sky does not come from the unsettling nature of the story, but from the careful placement of weather imagery in the novel. Shelley greatly incorporated weather into Frankenstein, especially bringing it to the forefront in the pivotal scenes where characters were experiencing earth-shattering events and harrowing trials. To give an example of foreshadowing about how important weather is in the story, it is mentioned for the first time in the second paragraph of the first page, which reads “I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes” (Shelley …show more content…
She says the following, driving the point of vitalism in “Many readers of the play have interpreted Lear’s sense of connection with the storm as a delusional assertion of power over nature from which he is gradually forced to retreat as subsequent events show him his impotence. But from a vitalist perspective, King Lear’s madness and the contest of the elements are best understood as a fragile, temporary mutually reinforcing system of vibrating sympathies: the king rages along with the storm and the storm rages along with the king; they are communicating with each other” (Marcus
When thinking of the key attributes of a well-rounded and timeless novel, the mind typically drifts towards the personalities and interrelations of the characters within it. With their thoughtful dialogue, moving discoveries, and endless adventures, it makes complete sense that the main characters of a novel exist to many as the focus and the heart of the story. Much like the man behind the curtain in the well-known story the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, however, there is a lesser-known yet extremely vital force at play. Weather, in all of its forms, is something that has remained one of the crucial building blocks needed in the process of creating a timeless story. Weather can be used as …show more content…
The gloomy image that is attached to the idea of Victor Frankenstein piddling away at a soon-to-be living being as lightning cracks in the sky does not come from the unsettling nature of the story, but from the careful placement of weather imagery in the novel. Shelley greatly incorporated weather into Frankenstein, especially bringing it to the forefront in the pivotal scenes where characters were experiencing earth-shattering events and harrowing trials. To give an example of foreshadowing about how important weather is in the story, it is mentioned for the first time in the second paragraph of the first page, which reads “I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes” (Shelley …show more content…
She says the following, driving the point of vitalism in “Many readers of the play have interpreted Lear’s sense of connection with the storm as a delusional assertion of power over nature from which he is gradually forced to retreat as subsequent events show him his impotence. But from a vitalist perspective, King Lear’s madness and the contest of the elements are best understood as a fragile, temporary mutually reinforcing system of vibrating sympathies: the king rages along with the storm and the storm rages along with the king; they are communicating with each other” (Marcus