Frankenstein 5

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Victor, out of his extreme guilt and self-loathing decides to take a trip up the mountains where he can escape his issues. However, he ends up enduring quite the contrary when he crosses paths with the monster up atop one of the highest mountain peeks. For their first encounter inside Victor's dorm room, Victor was filled with intense fear and regret and quickly fled the scene, however, in this setting, Victor has been through a emotional wreck and such worries of being dispatched by his monster leave him as he curses and berates the creature for the destruction of his youngest brother and Justine. However, the oddest and most unexpected thing happens when the creature talks back. This I was not expecting. Of my limited knowledge of Frankenstein stories, I had never known that the monster in the original novel could speak. This is another great difference between popular culture's Frankenstein and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The creature speaks with great meaning and vocabulary as he tries to gain his masters sympathy through the retelling of his two years of living. He explains the odd experience of being alive for the first time, in which he, "saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time", not knowing how to distinguish each scent (Shelley 70). His retelling of his journey sounds displays his progress of learning and how, like a baby, he learns to eat, drink, sleep, and get warm when he needs to. He learns of the pleasantness of the world, the savory-cooked meals, and the sweet songs of the birds. He also learns of real human emotions that deepen past simple urges to either eat or drink. Living next to the family, he learns about pain and suffering of the poor, and about the happiness of a family. All this time, one can only gain sympathy for the wretched creature.