How Does Mary Shelley Present Emotion In Frankenstein

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Everyone in the world has experienced emotion ranging from love to outrage, or from elation to sorrow; each individual that walks the earth has experienced all of these and sometimes more than one at a time. Mary Shelley uses her novel Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus to portray many emotions through multiple characters, including Victor Frankenstein, the creature, and Robert Walton. The characters all struggle in some way to find a companion. Walton faces an extended, frozen journey in which he wished he had the company of a similar man. Frankenstein muddles through life without the deep connection to others because he brought a horrific creature to life. The creature is abandoned and wants nothing more that to have another individual to share his life with. Shelley uses alienation and isolation as a focal point throughout novel as a whole. She connects those emotions to the yearning for companionship and need to belong. Therefore, through Frankenstein, Mary Shelley proves that when an individual appears to be alienated, …show more content…

He feels as though he is alienated from his crew the duration of the expedition. Walton explains that he believes that he cannot relate and connect to the men on board. At one point, in a letter to his sister, he writes, "I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean...among merchants and seamen" (Shelley 20). Walton felt as though he was the only man among a sea of people, he wasn't like all of the other men which posed a barrier that he could not get over. However, Walton is still searching for for a friend. He tells his sister Margaret that he, "desires the company of a man..." (Shelley 19). No matter how much Walton knows he is alone, he refuses give up on trying to find a friend on the voyage. Eventually, Walton and his crew find a man on the frozen ocean, whom they save and Walton reaches out to for