Drama Frankenstein Style, Point of View & Tone by Mary Shelley
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The overall style of Frankenstein is elevated and formal. The characters use complex diction (word choice) to capture the intensity of their emotional experiences. For example, when Walton writes to his sister at the start of the novel, he explains his loneliness by lamenting that “I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own.” Walton gives an idealized description of his vision of the perfect friend, and focuses on describing the intellect and cultural sophistication he imagines such an individual would possess. Similarly, when Victor describes learning what contemporary scientists were capable of achieving, he explains that “I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being.” He uses the metaphor of a musical instrument being played to describe the revelation and inspiration he experienced at this moment.
Both Walton and Victor are well-educated and highly ambitious men committed to achieving prestige in their chosen fields. The sophisticated language they use reflects the grandeur of their ambitions to do things like explore uncharted lands and develop a system for creating life. Interestingly, the monster speaks in a similar style, despite having been raised in isolation with practically no human contact. When the monster first speaks with Victor during their meeting on the mountaintop, he threatens to “glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.” Despite his monstrous appearance and the grotesque actions he is threatening to commit, the monster has a highly sophisticated command of language and speaks in the same elevated and grandiose style as Victor does. This stylistic choice confirms the implicit comparison between Victor and the monster that reoccurs throughout the novel, and supports the inherent humanity of the monster. Although Victor desperately wants to believe that he has nothing in common with his creation, the shared style of their speech suggests otherwise.
Frankenstein is narrated in the first-person (using language like “I”, “my” etc.) by different characters at different points in the novel. The shifts in narrator and the alternating points of view are central to the novel’s theme of looking past appearances to reflect on what may lie beneath. The novel begins with narration from Captain Walton, who is writing a series of letters to his sister Margaret. The point of view then switches to Victor Frankenstein, who tells Walton about his life and how he came to be wandering in the Arctic. When Walton first encounters Victor, he wonders if the stranger is insane, due to his wild appearance and desperate plight. By listening to Victor’s story Walton comes to appreciate his experiences. When Victor reaches the point in his story where he describes meeting with monster, the point of view switches yet again, this time to the monster, who narrates in the first person, describing his experiences. Both Victor and the reader are set up to expect the monster to be coarse, barbaric, violent, and inhuman, but his narrative shows him to be intelligent, sensitive, and capable of feeling profound human emotions like empathy and love. After that, the point of view returns to Victor, who continues his story. The novel ends with a return to Walton’s point of view and first person narration.
The tone of Frankenstein is largely bleak and despairing. The tone begins with optimism from the perspective of Captain Walton who is excited and hopeful about his Arctic voyage. The mood, however, quickly darkens with the appearance of Victor, who is in a dangerous condition, and who makes it clear at the start of his story that “nothing can alter my destiny.” The entire narrative is framed by a fatalistic acceptance that the end of the story will be tragic. This framing casts a dark shadow over the potentially positive account of Victor’s happy childhood and intellectual pursuits. The conclusion of the novel contributes most strongly to the tone of futility. By the time he has finished recounting his story, Victor is hopeless and waiting only to die. He considers his entire career and life to have been a tragic failure that resulted only in death and suffering. After the failure of Walton’s expedition, he too is forced to accept that he will not fulfill his ambitions and will have to return to England full of regret and disappointment.
