Read and examine Chapter 5 from the novel Frankenstein, written by Mary

Shelley. Examine how Shelly creates tension before, during and after the
creature's “birth”. Consider also how Victor's disappointment is conveyed and
how effective this is as a horror narrative.

Frankenstein is the story of a young man called Victor Frankenstein who's

training to be a doctor. He was the only child in a well-off family, his father
being a well-known and very good doctor, until his family adopted a young girl
by the name of Elizabeth and the two got on very well, better than most
“natural” siblings.

Not too long before Victor set off on his journey to Ingolstadt (Germany), his
mother died in childbirth. However, the child, a boy called William, survived.
Of course, Victor was devastated by her death, as were the other members of
the family.
When studying to become a doctor, Victor discovered a way to reanimate the
dead.

The reanimation experiment was a success and “the creature”, made of

different people, was “reborn”. But after seeing the creature, Victor runs away
in fear, back to his home in Geneva, Switzerland.
However, due to Victor's diary, left to him by his mother, the creature travels
to Geneva quicker and murders William in revenge.
By this time, Victor and Elizabeth are very much in love, and, seeing this, the
creature wants his own female companion, on the basis that he would leave
with her and never return to terrorize anyone again.
However, after Victor refuses, the creature murders Elizabeth.

Distraught by this, Victor successfully attempts to bring Elizabeth back to life,

but after witnessing Victor and the creature fighting over her, she sets herself
alight, committing suicide.
This leads to Victor chasing the creature all over the world, hungry for
revenge.
Eventually ending up in the North Pole, Victor has by now lost any will to
leave, succumbing to the freezing cold.
A nearby ship crew, on their own voyage/ quest, attempt to cremate Victor,
but they end up having to escape from the North Pole before lighting his pyre.

However, the creature “saves the day” by setting Victor alight along with
himself, due to the fact that he believes, due to his father (Victor) being dead,
it is his duty to give Victor a funeral and dies with him because, he also
believes that he has no meaning or point in life.
However, we are studying chapter 5 in detail. This is the chapter set during
the night that Victor finally gives birth to the creature, after two long years of
waiting.
As Victor is starting to give up hope that his experiment succeeded, the
creature's eyes open as he starts to stand up.

Victor describes how he now regrets all his experiments relating to this as he
comments on how terrifying the creature looks.
Victor escapes to his room, but when he finally gets to sleep, he has
nightmares about the death of his mother and Elizabeth.
He awakens to find the creature, holding back the curtains of Victor's four-
poster bed. Without a second thought, Victor escapes in fear yet again, but
this time to the courtyard outside his Ingolstadt home.

In the first sentence, Shelley describes the night's weather as “dreary”,

adding to the murky, miserable setting of the novel. This is a form of pathetic
fallacy.
Later on, Shelley also says of how the rain pattered “dismally”, this being
another form of pathetic fallacy and adds to the depressing mood that Victor
has been in since his mother died, although stronger now since starting these
experiments.

Before the creature awakens, Victor feels an “anxiety that almost amounts to
agony”. This adds to the tension because not only do we know what's going
to happen, but neither does Victor, the protagonist.

Victor comments on how his “candle was nearly burnt out”. Although this is
supposed to be taken literally, it is also meant to symbolize how he, being the
candle, is running out of hope, or, in this case, burning out.
I believe this is called a conceptual metaphor. It can also emphasize how long
he has been awake for this experiment.

Another conceptual metaphor follows just after the previous one, where Victor
says “by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light”. This is used to represent
that glimmer of hope that was almost dead, which Victor has now found and
felt.

Victor describes his creation as “the creature”, implying that it wasn't human
and hence had no name or identity. He also calls it a wretch, suggesting that
it is disfigured and hence inhuman.

Victor starts his next paragraph asking, “how can I describe my emotions at
this catastrophe?”, showing us how he can't find words to describe the
creature whom he is now also calling a catastrophe.
Also, he might be referring to the catastrophe of his experiments in the first
place, but I don't believe he is.

Victor tells us that he had created the creature “with such infinite pains and
care I had endeavoured to form”. This tells us how long and hard he had
taken to carefully and precisely create this creature, and now he regrets it all.
Since the creature has not actually done anything except move around, Victor
is describing the creature only by what he looks like, thus adding to the
terrifying image of the creature that we already have.

Victor tells us that he had “selected his features as beautiful.” Following this
up with “Beautiful! -- Great God!”. This informs us that, although Victor had
tried, the creature looked far from beautiful.
Victor goes on to describe to us that the creature's yellow skin “scarcely
covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath”. We can picture from this
that the creature is almost transparent, which would enable us to see past his
layers of skin.

Although Victor describes the success of the creature's hair being a “flowing
lustrous black” and his teeth having a “pearly whiteness”, he then shoots his
own compliments down by continuing, saying that “these luxuriances only
formed a more horrid contrast”. This makes any hope of ours that the
creature looks even remotely likeable, void.

Victor moves on to describing the creature as having “dull yellow” eyes. Dull
tells us that he has boring eyes, while we imagine his yellow eyes as a sickly
colour.
He says that the “watery” eyes of the creature seemed almost the same
colour as the “dun white sockets” in which they were set, suggesting that the
creature had no pupils and, because of this, no soul or identity.

Victor describes the creature as having a “shrivelled complexion and straight

black lips”. This, for me, makes me think that Victor is saying that the creature
has not entirely left (being?) the dead, possibly explaining the lack of a soul.

Moving away from describing the creature, Victor decides to tell us of the past
two years leading up to this night, saying:
“I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life
into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I
had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had
finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust
filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created”.
This reminds us of just how much effort Victor put into this experiment and
how disappointed, disgusted and terrified he is now that he's seen the results.
After Victor has ran back to his bedroom, unable to go to sleep, he starts
“traversing” his bedroom chamber. To me, this suggests that, subconsciously,
he is lost, unable to think clearly about what to do next.
Finally, “lassitude succeeded to the tumult” that Victor had endured and he
fell asleep at last. This shows us that his body can't really handle the past few
hours, or the past two years, and so his body has collapsed.
Victor tells us that he was “endeavouring to seek a few moments of
forgetfulness”, showing us that he just wants to give up and forget about the
events of the past few hours.

After Victor had the nightmare about Elizabeth and his mother, his “teeth
chattered, and every limb became convulsed”. This emphasizes how badly
the dream affected him since Victor now has no control over his body.

Another pathetic fallacy describes mirrors Victor's feelings by mentioning the

“dim and yellow light of the moon”.

When Victor once again sees the creature, the creature “muttered some
articulate sounds”, once again reminding us that the creature is inhuman and
incapable of human speech or social interaction, instantly making the
creature become an outcast.

Soon after, Victor calls the creature a “demoniacal corpse”, reminding us that
the creature is not truly alive and is a creation of pure evil.
Lastly, Victor describes the event of the creature becoming “alive” once more
as “a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived”. Since Dante could
supposedly not have thought up something this evil and monstrous, it again
proves just how evil and terrifying this creature is.

In the end, sadly, I do not think this works well as a horror story in today's
time for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons for this being that, since
science has evolved so much since Shelley's time, the idea of bringing
someone back to life wouldn't be as far-fetched or terrifying as it would have
been back them. Although not directly related to the question of whether it
works as a horror story, I also feel that the writing of Shelley's time would not
be as appreciated or powerful as it was back then due to the fact that, like
science, the English language (Most languages, I guess) is evolving so fast.
There has also been so many horrific characters created in films and books in
recent years that Frankenstein, although an original and basis for many
horror character, wouldn't stand up to most of these on the “Terror Scale”.

However, I do feel that in Shelley's time, this would've been one of the most
terrifying things ever heard of, mostly because of the opposites to my points
for why it's not terrifying now.