Frankenstein Sublime Essay

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s quest for knowledge to create life, spurred on by his mother’s death, and the visualization of the creature as an angel of destruction reflects the importance of the sublime in the novel. The dark and mysterious nature of death in the role of the sublime hangs over the entirety of the novel, infecting Victor with paranoia for what devastation his creature may cause. This fear affects Victor both physically and mentally, with the guilt he carries for his actions and the consequences which befall others, decaying his already fragile state of mind. Love and the loss it brings is another important emotion emulated through the sublime. Due to Victor’s creation and the actions the creature takes,

He dreamed of creating a new species but gave no thought to the hardships they would endure or the catastrophes they may cause (Oates 548). Victor takes responsibilities for their achievements and imagines his creations seeing him as God, but when he goes through with his plans, Victor does not feel any responsibility towards his first creature and its failings due to its unusual and horrifying appearance. Victor describes that “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” due to the creature’s looks (Shelley 57). This highlights the unknown and uncontrollable nature of life and death as well as the superficiality of the world in the novel. This may also reflect Mary Shelley’s view of the world and how quickly its inhabitants will turn on someone who does not fit their strict societal

As described by one article, the creature is “a man-made miracle... only a fragment of that ideal... a mockery, a parody, a joke” (Oates 550). Though Victor used human body parts to create it, the creature acts as an entirely new species, created in a way that many would view as unnatural. While both beings are highly intelligent and gained their knowledge through experimentation and trial and error, Victor’s work errs more on the side of scientific discovery and the creature experiments with socializing and learning about the world it was brought into. Victor naturally fits into this world while the creature has to adapt with no outside help. Their differences in belonging and their relegated place in the world as well as the separation between the two is further shown in the novel through its