IT WAS on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
In this famous scene, the scientist Frankenstein, gives birth to his new creation, only to reject his unnamed child/ creature almost immediately on aesthetic grounds. Frankenstein’s rejection of his ‘child’ causes terrible consequences and Mary Shelley’s text reveals the primal emotional eruptions of rejection.
The great inventor has created a ‘thing’ and the birth is described in terms of violence( ”agitation’ and ‘convulsive motion’ ) emphasizing the unnaturalness of the creation from his point of view. I stress the narratorial perspective as it is crucial and is unambiguous as to where the emotional and moral responsibility reside.
Furthermore, the reader could read ‘otherwise’ and read this violence as being a symptom of the emotional turmoil suffered by the ‘new’ creature ironically manufactured from dead things.
The reanimation of death is thus a blasphemous mockery of resurrection, revealing the egotism/megalomania of a scientist, defying moral codes because he is operating without spiritual boundaries.
The use of pathetic fallacy confirms the ‘dismal’ ill fated outcome of Frankenstein’s tampering with nature. How can any reader expect that the creation and ‘birth’ of the creature could lead anywhere but damnation? ?
Frankenstein’s ‘agony’ suggests his extreme psychological state and the candle’s near demise underlines the collapse of this world’s stability and morality with Frankenstein;s interference with life and death.
Individualism has run rampant, ignoring moral boundaries and codes and Shelley’s evocation of this scene leavest he reader in no doubt as to the horror of what must follow.
