Gcse Prose essay Essay Example

Gcse Prose essay Essay Example Gcse Prose essay Essay Gcse Prose essay Essay The book Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley. Mary finished writing the book in 1817 when she was just 19 years of age, but the book was not published till the start of 1818. Mary conceived the idea of Frankenstein in 1816 the year without a summer. In that year Mary and her lover at the time, Percy Shelley took a trip to Lake Geneva to see Lord Bryon but all outdoor events they planned were cancelled due to the weather. This meant their whole summer was spent indoors talking only ever about science and the supernatural. After reading a supernatural story they came up with the idea that they each write a supernatural story and the best story would win. Mary thought of an idea which produced Frankenstein. Marys inspiration to write Frankenstein came from a number of things, for example: James Lind, the mentor of Percy Shelley while he was at Eton. He was well known because of his interest in animal electricity. At Eton he was probably one of the first people in England to demonstrate Electro-medical experiments in which he made dead frogs jump like living ones. The Genre of Frankenstein is a Gothic genre. Gothic genre usually tells a story of horror and romance. As in the case of Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein creates the monster which establishes the horror, the other side of the story is the romance with Victor and Elizabeth. In the end these two differences meet where the monster kills Elizabeth, the combination of these two ideas produces a gothic but wonderful storyline. 1st Para The basic plot of Chapter 23 is that the monster is on the loose and kills Elizabeth. A search takes place with no success. : Mary Shelley has used this chapter to express the feelings of the characters, mainly Victor. At the start it explains the thoughts of Victor and the monster through Pathetic Fallacy, using the weather to describe how the tension is building up and that it would be released soon. Further on it describes Victors thoughts and feeling after he hears, and then finds, that the monster has killed Elizabeth. Mary Shelley moves the reader to feel empathy with the narrator in the scene where Victor expresses his love for his dead wife. To him she almost appears to be sleeping: as she lay, her head upon her arm and a handkerchief thrown across her face and neck, I might have supposed her asleep. This contrasts sharply with the horror of what has happened, and the reader is reminded of this in the same paragraph: The murderous mark of the fiends grasp was on her neck. Mary Shelley then introduces another emotion, that of anger. In his anger Victor goes on the search for the monster, he then starts questioning himself about why did he make the creature and could he live with this. After the unsuccessful hunt he goes back to the room where Elizabeth is dead and lays with her. He is still questioning himself and feeling immense amount of guilt for what he has done. However at the end of the chapter he thinks to himself: Why should I be like this? Why should I feel all this guilt? After all my life has been a tale of horrors. In this chapter Mary Shelley uses Victor as a tool to express a rollercoaster of emotions, thoughts and feelings. 2nd Para The 1st and 2nd paragraphs of Chapter 23 show greatly, the atmosphere surrounding the story. The chapter begins with calmness: transitory light lovely scene of waters, woods and swiftly changes building into a horrific storm. The Wind now rose with great violence. Here Mary Shelley has used personification to show Frankensteins mood which rapidly increases in violence just like the winds ferocity. This creates a certain foreboding atmosphere to the story. It links how stormy the weather is to the moods of the characters. Most of the sentences and phrases used in this paragraph use pathetic fallacy, which is the attribution of human emotions or characteristics to imitate objects or to nature. In addition where it says the cloud swept across it swifter than a flight of the vulture, it is showing a symbol of death, reflecting back onto the story about the deaths that have occurred and the death that happens in this chapter. Mary Shelley has the ability to manipulate the reader into a far deeper way of thought. Suddenly a heavy storm of rain descended also builds up the atmosphere and suspense, not only because of the words she has put into the sentence such as Suddenly but because of the way the sentence links to what the characters mood is like e. g. descended. This is an indication of how Victors mood is changing from being happy in paragraph 1 to anxiety and fearfulness, which will dominate most of this chapter. The storm reminds us of the night that Victors monster was created and the other stormy night that the monster went on his rampage of killing people. Finally the restless waves just adds that little bit of extra suspense. It practically tells the reader what is about to happen. Restless waves that were beginning to rise is telling that the characters moods, especially Victors, were going to rise in a way of aggression. This is because of the fear for his life because of the monster he has created. Not only does Mary Shelley build up fear and tension through comparisons but also through the vocabulary she uses. 3rd Para Throughout the 3rd paragraph in chapter 23 Mary uses words such as obscured, terrified and conflict to put fear and terror into the readers mind. She draws on peoples fear of the dark and how the imagination plays tricks on the mind when shapes cant be seen properly, but so soon as night obscured the shapes of objects, a thousand fears arose in my mind. This also reflects Victors feelings and how his fear is building too. Another way Mary Shelley puts terror into the readers mind is by using repetition. But this night is dreadful, very dreadful the way Mary Shelley writes this emphasizes whats going on, it makes you feel whatever is happening is twice as bad. Phrases such as fearful silence hold the reader in suspense as to what is going to happen next. The effect of this is to personify the silence. Elizabeths fear is shown in the 4th paragraph where she is worried about Victors agitation. She is described as trembling from the way Victor glances at her which communicated terror to her. The reader is left now feeling tense because the characters are agitated.