Frankenstein Part 2 Chapter 2
At Chamonix, Victor continues to feel despair. He again tries to escape it through nature: he climbs to the peak of a m
called Montanvert. But just as the view begins to lift his spirits, Victor sees the monster. He curses it and wishes for it
destruction. But with great eloquence the monster claims to be Victor's offspring. "I ought to be thy Adam," it says. T
monster continues that it was once benevolent, and turned to violence only after Victor, its creator, abandoned it. It
Victor to listen to its story. Victor, for the first time thinking about his responsibilities as a creator, follows the monst
cave in the glacier, and sits down to listen.
Themes – highlight themes and add a quote for each that are Links to HT
present.
Social status/class The creature complains of the way that Victo
Loneliness and Isolation him and that, as his creator, he has a respons
Violence guide and help him; if Victor had not simply a
Language and Power the creature, he may have remained benevol
Playing God kind; thereby he would never have killed Will
Relationships and family Comparatively, towards the end of the handm
Treatment of women Offred speaks directly to god in her narration
Science questioning why he would make her live like t
Mankind and nature some ways, though god is not necessarily Offr
Victims creator, he is a figure of creation; god let Offr
Warnings just as Victor let down the creature.
Quotes
Loneliness and isolation- Despite returning home to his family,
Victor chooses to spend more and more time in solitude;
increasingly isolating himself, not only from the domestic sphere,
but society as a whole. He constantly speaks of himself as a singular
and solitude being, not in the company of anyone else, as he did
when Clerval was his companion ‘I spent the following day roaming
through the valley’, ‘I stood’, ‘I retired’, the loneliness of which is
conveyed through the repetitive use of the pronoun ‘I’ which
isolates a singular and independent existence.
Violence/ mankind and nature- As an almost- atmospheric warning,
the natural landscape and the weather surrounding Victor is very
ominous and threatening although grand and beautiful. He talks
about the glacier wall as a place of ‘solemn silence’, ‘a glorious
presence chamber of imperial nature’ thereby idealising and
extenuating the overly-romanticised view of the glacier especially
with the hyperbolic use of ‘glorious’ . However there is a darker
undertone to these natural forms, with the use of sibilance in
‘solemn silence’ creating a soft ‘s’ sound like a whispering of a
presence. Equally, the sheer power of nature is emphasised by
Victor’s comparison of the reverberations of ice cracking ,and the
way that nature so easily manipulates something of such a great
force ‘as if it had been but a plaything in their hands’. The
description suggests that god’s hands, which supposedly created
nature, are much stronger than the attempts of man to manipulate
nature- something that Victor needs reminded of.
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