Week 1: Frankenstein

Throughout the book, the majority of the characters you encounter are facing an overwhelming feeling of loneliness. The first time this gothic element is introduced is in letter 2 when Robert Walton writes a letter to his sister about how he longs for a friend and how he wishes for one more than anything else. Walton states that “I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavor to regulate my mind. Well, these are useless complaints; I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean…” (Page 8). We see this theme continue in the book when we meet Frankenstein and he shares his story which is plagued with the misery of grief starting early on in his life when his mother dies and continuing until everyone he knows has been killed and he is left with no one and is totally and completely alone. Even after he was told by the monster that he bad things will happen on his wedding night (which was to be assumed that someone will die), Frankenstein couldn’t help himself and continued to marry Elizabeth even though he knew the risks because he couldn’t handle his emotions and the thought of living without her was too great. Once she was killed, Frankenstein was as lonely as the monster as he too now lived without a mate. The gothic theme of being overwrought with emotion most directly affected the monster whose emotions would rapidly swing from an extreme hatred of humans to treating them with the greatest of kindness. However, his greatest emotion was also how lonely he was and how he wanted someone else that looked like him that he could love. This great feeling of loneliness drove all of his other emotions to change quickly. When Frankenstein refused to create the monster a mate, the monster killed everyone that his creator loved so that he was as lonely as well. When Frankenstein dies trying to seek revenge on the monster, the monster decides to take his own life as well. And in the monster’s final words you can truly see how torturing the gothic element of emotion “I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames.” (Page 277). This sort of emotional turmoil is gothic because it shows how distressing emotions are and how they can drive one to heinous acts of violence and destruction. As the reader this type of element effects how you see emotions and how they have the ability to rapidly change everything in your life if you let them control you.