Symbols in Frankenstein
The Symbolic Dream: After fainting from The Being being brought to life, Victor Frankenstein has a nightmare in which he kisses his "cousin" Elizabeth who then turns into his mother's corpse filled with maggots. Elizabeth is the core of Victor's happiness, her death in his dream is symbolic of the death of all his loved ones and her body turning into his mothers represents that Victor and Elizabeth will never be married because it was his mother who first suggested he and Elizabeth were always suppose to marry. The death of his mother at a young age may have caused Victor's obsession of making human beings live longer leading to corpse reanimation.
The Being is born in November, the harvest season which is a symbolizes the birth of death and the death The Being will wreck on Victor's loved ones. This is an essential clue the deaths and misery The Being will bestow on Victor and his family, The Being survives better during the cold months, that are associated with darkness, starvation, and death.
The small and presumably insignificant phrases referring to fire, such as "spark" are symbolic of life and intelligence (69). Victor uses the phrase "spark of being" to describe bringing The Being to life, this could support Hollywood's interpretation of lightning or electricity bringing the creation to life. Even The Being berates Victor for not "[extinguishing] the spark of existence" within him because all it has done was cause suffering and death.
Bodies of water represent escapes for Victor, in chapter while in a row boat on Lake Geneva he contemplates suicide by drowning himself in the lake. Later on his trip with Henry to Scotland, Victor is able to enjoy his surroundings and company with his closest friend. Then in chapter 23 before their wedding night, Victor and Elizabeth spend some time on the lake but when the ship "touched the shore" Victor feels the "fears revive which soon were to clasp me and cling to me forever" of The Being's promise of the wedding night (297). Water is a huge symbol of mental and physical escape for Victor, whenever he is around water a sense of calm and peace comes over him for a short while. The physical escape Victor seeks changes continuously, at first he contemplates suicide by drowning himself but at the end of the play he journeys with Henry by ocean and when chasing down the monster he traverses frozen oceans of the North Sea.
The Being is born in November, the harvest season which is a symbolizes the birth of death and the death The Being will wreck on Victor's loved ones. This is an essential clue the deaths and misery The Being will bestow on Victor and his family, The Being survives better during the cold months, that are associated with darkness, starvation, and death.
The small and presumably insignificant phrases referring to fire, such as "spark" are symbolic of life and intelligence (69). Victor uses the phrase "spark of being" to describe bringing The Being to life, this could support Hollywood's interpretation of lightning or electricity bringing the creation to life. Even The Being berates Victor for not "[extinguishing] the spark of existence" within him because all it has done was cause suffering and death.
Bodies of water represent escapes for Victor, in chapter while in a row boat on Lake Geneva he contemplates suicide by drowning himself in the lake. Later on his trip with Henry to Scotland, Victor is able to enjoy his surroundings and company with his closest friend. Then in chapter 23 before their wedding night, Victor and Elizabeth spend some time on the lake but when the ship "touched the shore" Victor feels the "fears revive which soon were to clasp me and cling to me forever" of The Being's promise of the wedding night (297). Water is a huge symbol of mental and physical escape for Victor, whenever he is around water a sense of calm and peace comes over him for a short while. The physical escape Victor seeks changes continuously, at first he contemplates suicide by drowning himself but at the end of the play he journeys with Henry by ocean and when chasing down the monster he traverses frozen oceans of the North Sea.