Nature and scenery

I noticed in the last few chapters it mentions nature and scenery a lot. It started to affect the way Victor thought and felt. “The rain depressed me; my old feelings recurred, and I was miserable." Then it said that he went to the summit of Montanvert which had a beautiful scenery to make him feel better. I think this might be another theme in Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley frequently uses imagery in order to give a detailed description of the different exotic locations. While Shelley uses various sensory images for description of scenery, she also uses them as a method of describing the character’s feelings. For example, when Walton describes the climate of Petersburg in his first letter to his sister, he describes the slowly cooling of weather. While he “walks in the streets of Petersburg”  he “feel[s] a cold northern breeze play upon [his] cheeks” that “braces [his] nerves and fills [him] with delight” (Shelley 1). Shelley uses the same idea with Frankenstein. When Frankenstein lives on a desolate island to create his second monster, Frankenstein describes the view outside his laboratory using sensory images. He tells how “the sea…was almost motionless, for the winds were hushed, and all nature reposed under the eye of the quiet moon” (Frankenstein 145). While Shelley does give an account of how the moon and the sea look, she also shows how Frankenstein uses the view from the beach as an escape from his toils of creating a monster. While describing the cold breeze and the temperature using sensory images, Shelley also describes how this makes Walton feel rather than simply stating that the weather is cold. In other situations, Shelley uses imagery to describe the scene. When Frankenstein travels to the Swiss Alps, he illustrates “the abrupt sides of vast mountains” and “a few shattered spines” as the “glorious presence – chamber of imperial nature was broken only by the brawling waves or the fall of some vast fragment” and even “the thunder sound of the avalanche” (Shelley 78). Frankenstein’s detailed description helps the reader visualize the scene clearly in their mind as well as the surrounding sounds and the texture of nearby objects. Altogether, Shelley uses imagery as a tool for describing the setting as well as a method to dwell into character’s feelings.

http://www.pkwy.k12.mo.us/west/teachers/gerding/NovelProjects/2Frankenstein/website/index_files/Page669.html