Response to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein

Frankenstein, as one of the early horror stories by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, is a novel with a very interesting structure and storyline. While the supernatural element of science and monsters is what brings Frankenstein within the genre of horror, Shelley also focuses on emphasizing the different emotions featuring the different characters of the story.

Whenever I read new stories, I always get focused on the choice of narrative structure that is used in the book. Or maybe even apart from books, I get really thrilled by unconventional structures such as flashbacks and fragmented timelines as it seems to tie puzzle pieces of the story altogether. Therefore, what really caught my attention was that Shelley has structured Frankenstein in an unconventional way, framing the main story of Frankenstein and the monster within the stories of Robert Walton. Despite the risk that unconventional storylines can be difficult to maintain the focus of the story and keep the readers on track, Shelley’s choice of this narrative structure successfully describes the emotional responses derived by the main character, Victor Frankenstein.

Through is framing structure of narrative, Robert Walton, the captain who is described as the character who rescued Frankenstein on to his boat, is shown effectively as the mirroring image of Victor Frankenstein. Starting from the introduction of the book, Walton is shown as a confident man who is very proud of himself, discovering what he is good at and carrying on with it. This is the element that forms a close tie between Walton and Frankenstein, which also helps with the continuation of the story because the similarity allows Walton to become an effective listener towards Frankenstein’s story and Frankenstein is also able to carry on as a form of a warning towards Walton as he is taking the similar life path.

As I said this is a framed narrative structure, just as the story started with Walton’s letters to his sister, the story again ends with Walton’s letters which now contains a sense of bitterness due to Frankenstein’s death. Serving as both the intro and the outro of Frankenstein’s story of regret, what I really liked about it was that the author was trying to show the impact the story caused towards Walton as the primary listener. Contrasted to his enthusiasm of the beginning, Walton ends up caught in agony which really shows the change he has gone through as a character. This I believe also opens up the ending towards us, as although the story of Frankenstein and the monster is concluded through the death of them, we do not know the path Walton will be taking in the future. The mirroring effect is the way how Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley opens up interpretations towards the readers, which I believe carries on the novel a little further than 200 pages.