Mary Shelley's Description Of Frankenstein

At the beginning Shelley contrasts his beauty and his wretchedness. Mary Shelley’s description of the monster reduces the good things and increases the bad things which makes our first impression of the monster as being horrific Mary Shelley writes: ‘His teeth of a pearly whiteness’ which were of a ‘Horrid contrast with his watery eyes’ Mary Shelley is using Victor Frankenstein’s first impression of the monster was clearly horrific. You could tell from the first time Victor looked at the monstrous creation properly and he straight away knew the evil he had created.

One of the first words of Victor Frankenstein upon seeing the monster was ‘Beautiful, great god’ Frankenstein was infact being ironic as his creation was indeed not beautiful. He is completely despondent: ‘The beauty of my dreams vanished and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart’ Mary Shelley uses such words to make us feel that this is such a monster that is so horrid that it will turn the heart black with disgust even to look at it.

Mary Shelley gives us an early indication that this monster is not going to be such a first-class monster but a wicked one.

Words To Describe Victor Frankenstein

This also agins shows us that she is very intelligent because of the way she uses the language. This quote explains everything about how Dr Frankenstein felt. Frankenstein also makes us think in negative ways towards the monster because he uses very effective and powerful words such as: “Demonical corpse”, “miserable monster” and “ugly wretch” This lets us know that he is regretting the creation and he comparing it with devils and demons.

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Victor Frankenstein is so scared of the monster that he leaves it and doesn’t look back.

This also shows Mary Shelley’s intelligence because she uses very effective words to describe the monster. Our impression of the monster changes later in the novel when Frankenstein the monster tells us his side of the story. Mary Shelly emphasizes the positive aspects of the monster at this stage. After the monster’s creator runs away from him. The monster goes out into the world. His first encounter with humans arn’t the best of encounters because at first sight of the monster they straight away judge the monsters by its looks and start beating him and throw missile weapons at him, for example:

“grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons” Mary Shelley is showing here that this monster didn’t obviously look like how human beings do, this also show the wretchedness of the monster, it is also giving a simple message which is ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’. We find out what the monster is really like when he goes and lives in a hovel near some cottagers. Mary Shelley writes about how he helped them at night when the cottagers were asleep. The creature speaks of how he:

‘Often took tools. The use of which I quickly discovered and brought home firing sufficient for the consumptions for several days’ This showed he had a caring side to him and when he saw that the cottagers were having trouble he went and helped secretly by cutting the wood for them and doing several other things. Mary Shelley also writes about how the monster learns to speak and learns new words by listening to the cottagers, particularly Felix who teaches his girlfriend Safie to speak English. The creature says:

‘I discovered the names that were given to some of the most familiar objects of discourse, I learned and applied the words. ‘ We start to feel sorry for the monster when he discovers that he is nothing like other people and that he is completely different to them in looks, height and strength. At this point we feel sorry for him because he talks about how his going to present himself to the cottagers. Frankenstein the monster says: ‘their grace, beauty and delicate complexions, but how was I terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent pool! ‘