How horror is presented in Mary Shelly’s novel and the 1931 film “Frankenstein”
Introduction
Mary Shelly’s film and novel “Frankenstein” (1931) are a horror story about a German student, Frankenstein, who invented a monster that eventually developed into the cause of his creator’s demolition. This implies that the work is gothic since it concentrates on the mysterious or ghostlike creature, and the setting is in a dark environment, often unusual; hence, creating nervousness and terror to the audience. The story involves Captain Walton’s and Victor’s narratives on the monster and their backgrounds. Shelley employs the ghostly elements of raising the deceased and making them existent again in the universe. She also portrays Victor’s use of the deceased for scientific experimentation; a feature that frightens the audience since it is an unnatural spectacle. It is significant to express that the intention of Shelly and other horror movie directors is to produce the frightening experience that scares audiences. This shows how horror is presented in the movie through several ways, for example, the combination of the chase scenes in the Arctic regions that distract readers from the normal comforts of watching fiction movies. Despite the movie depicting several themes in the plot, Frankenstein presents numerous elements that showcase horror aspects.
Synopsis
The story starts with Frankenstein and his aide called Fritz exhuming a dead body from a grave and the other from the crossbeams. The sets the beginning of making the monster as other essential samples are stolen by Fritz from a medical university where he steals the brain. This brain is for Frankenstein’s creature, which will enable to grasp concepts like normal human beings. However, Fritz mistakenly drops the glass jar carrying the brain and instead picks another that is different. The different jar happens to contain an abnormal brain considering the label on the surface of the glass. On the other hand, Elizabeth (Frankenstein’s spouse) and Victor go to pay a visit to Frankenstein at the laboratory (Shelley 87).
Frankenstein starts the creation of a simulated human being, which is animated by presenting it to electricity produced by a rainstorm. This is a test aimed at determining if the creature will possess human qualities. The monster lying on a podium elevated to the top of the workshop where it is bare to lightning. The podium then inclines, and the first indication of life of the mortal is his shaking right arm. This excites Frankenstein that his invention has come to life despite the challenges that they faced with his aide. However, the creature materializes to be a dreadful feature that cannot speak. This sets the start of the creature’s shortcomings as it causes troubles at the laboratory. The monster becomes disastrous and kills Fritz who constantly beats it (Krensky 138). Meanwhile, Frankenstein prepares to wed Elizabeth since he assumes that Dr Waldmann will destroy the monster, not knowing the havoc that the creature has already caused. The monster terrifies the Bavarian country after victimization by his architect’s aide Fritz and the entire society. However, the film’s most notable scene is where Frankenstein befriends a young teenager called Maria at a lakeshore, and unintentionally tosses her into the water and sinks her beside other plants.
During the wedding ceremony, the mood changes from joyful to sad when a man arrives carrying the corpse of his daughter murdered by the monster. This prompts Frankenstein together with Vogel to launch a lynch crowd to kill the monster (Shelley 286). Frankenstein finally encounters the monster at the foothill where he is pulled and thrown into an aged windmill by the monster. The blade of the mill saves Frankenstein from falling on the hard ground, and the infuriated residents set the structure ablaze where the monster is allegedly burnt to death. The tragic events that emerge after the creation of the monster make the entire village panic and frightened. The monster sketchily evokes, from the explicit, modern viewers, to produce the intended theme of the movie (Hoobler and Hoobler 219). This slightly intricate subjects unclearly hinted at in the novel and, which deliver an enduring nervousness. According to the novel, a crucial portion of Shelley’s thesis is that the beast’s final life of the fierceness and revenge is morally a sociological invention of his development, and this is scariest aspect of Frankenstein. It shows the skill of a moral yet biased society to change the beast into a being so terrible than the actual human (Shelley 321).
Gothic features in the works
In the Gothic storyline, the characters normally appear to link the mortal world and the mystic world. For example, the Frankenstein devil appears to communicate between himself and his maker because it only emerges everyplace Victor goes. Notably, the monster also travels with astounding strange haste with Victor matching him in the rush towards the North Pole. Therefore, Mary Shelley incorporates several elements to produce a remarkable novel in the Gothic ritual. The monster characters represent awkward scientific trials that scientists did not intend to observe.
According to Cobley, Shalvey and Shelley (P. 295), this is because the monster does possess humane traits, but still kills for retaliation. This is an aspect that occurs to everybody including his adopted family of the De Lacey’s. Through noticing the De Lacey family, the mortal became cultured and insecure. This happens when he views his image in a pond he believes that his bodily presence is dreadful compared to the individuals he encounters. Although he finally approached the family with the expectation of being their pal, they were scared by his presence and chased him far and then vacated the house permanently. The monster became furious and burnt the cottage because the family turned against him. This angers him that human beings are his energy, and the monster starts revenging against this behaviour by killing the residents (Cobley, Shalvey and Shelley 301).
Early Gothic novels have branded themselves over the use of ethical commitment and exotic setting in their themes. For instance, Dr Waldmann puts his profession in test by attempting to invent a creature. However, this does not happen as per their plans and the creature turns violent killing Fritz. In both the book and the movie, the monster is the stock character that is present represents the social outcast, the rebel, the guilt weird wanderer and the lonely stranger disturbing residents. These scenes of killings and fear in the movie represent the difference that occurs between Gothic products and other fiction movies. However, some scenes also show elements of love and affection as Victor marries his lover Elizabeth. In most cases, the monsters would kill the loved ones or the innocent as their victims. This further creates suspense and fear to the audience as they do not expect the protagonists to make other suffers at their mistakes (Bann 210).
Creation of fear features
Shelly uses different atmospheres to create a supernatural sphere, where fear is the vital notion. For example, the gloomy weather, ghostly locations and peculiar noises in the space are some of the few ways that establish wickedness in the movie. This implies that the amount of time and feature dedicated to the setting of the work of allows the environment to develop into a principal appeal in the work. This is due to the reality that the antagonist in the two works tends to have hyperbolic personalities. On the other hand, the horror villain, Victor is depicted as cold, unreasoning and irrationally unpleasant. The use of dark scenes packed with alarming shades and strange supports are evident in the movie; hence, generating the horror feeling of fear. This is because these scenes reveal the strange atmosphere that is essential to establish a scary or threatening mood. Inclusion of such scenes is crucial in horror movies since it instigates fear before the real horror arrives (Bann 210).
The various aspects in the novel and the film produce the Gothic characteristics. For instance, horror films frequently used with science fiction when the nuisance or monster associated with exploitation of technology, or when community is endangered by Martians. This is evident in the organization of the plot when Victor tries to exploit technology in creating a human being. He uses research laboratory and relies, on Dr Waldmann medical experience, to help him achieve this invention (Shelley and Hindle 157). Element of science fiction produced occurs when they steal human brains at a medical university laboratory. The author tries to illustrate that medical labs contain human brains, which are used as raw materials for creating human beings. For instance, the circumstance that Victor is going past the confines of science by crafting the creature is one part of the subject of science fiction, which goes past the limits and results in the negative effects. Similarly, the horrible acts of the monster through killings of Fritz and Maria cause the frightening aspect of most horror films. The monster kills Maria, an innocent girl, who could not mistake it for a devil. This exposes the monster as a killer who should not interact with members of the society. Therefore, the organization of horror films as scary movies and the morbid evidently observed (Shelley and Hindle 174).
The setting
The setting is vital because it assists to emphasize numerous themes that already exist in the novel. The author uses places such as the mountains and the island to stress on the theme of separation from society. The monster portrays a strange feature that distinguishes it from reality and sets it as apart. The setting produces the theme of horror by displaying awkward scenes that generate suspense to the audience. In most occasions, the setting of horror depicts the strange and weird scenarios that audience cannot endure while watching the movie (Shelley 215). The setting displays the monster living in an isolated situation as he slowly makes its way to the world. This enables readers and viewers to witness the gradual degradation of the monster from a scientific invention to a murderous creature. This happens because the beast’s monstrous appearance arouses fear wherever he meets humans; his prospect for goodness weakens, especially when Frankenstein fails to offer him the much needed friendship of a friend (Shelley 284).
The mountain is also used as the residence of ghosts where they escape to after killing people. The story shows Victor heading to the mountain to hunt the monster since he believes that monsters stay in mountains. Similarly, the author uses a hellish season of cold and desertion. This atmosphere makes the monster feel his heart ease as spring approaches. The influence of landscape on mood is also apparent in the entire novel, as for Victor the natural domain’s influence to comfort him diminishes when he recognizes that the monster will disturb him regardless of where he goes. Towards the end, as Victor hunts the monster, nature, in the arrangement of the Chilly desert, functions as the figurative setting for his original fight against the creature. A characteristic dark shot is a restricted bang of footprints coming nearer to the protagonist, who is attempting to hide from this risk. This is seen at the weeding scene when Victors leaves his bridge on realizing that the monster is killing people in the neighbourhood. Significantly, the movie and the book produce a dominant feature of horror genres, which involves the creature killing innocent victims due to their closeness to the creature. Maria and Fritz fall victims of the monster for their innocence being close to the beast (Cobley, Shalvey and Shelley 315).
Theme of monstrosity
Theme of monstrosity is evident in the entire novel and movie as the monster takes the role of the antagonist. The monster is described as eight feet tall and horribly ugly which makes it face rejection from the society. However, his monstrosity results not only from his weird presence, but also from the strange mode of his formation, which entails the private simulation of a combination of stolen body segments and strange substances. This implies that monster is a creation, not of concerted scientific determination, but of dark, mystic mechanisms. The beast is only the most accurate of a number of immoral articles in the novel, including the information that Victor used to generate the monster. To achieve this monstrosity effect, the directors use weird voices and graphical effects that create tension in the events of the movie. The presence of the monster is accompanied by some unpleasant sounds that generate a lot of suspense (Bann 210).
Organization of the works
In the organization of both works, language plays a significant role in the monstrosity’s development. This is produced when the monster learns hear through watching the labourers. This enables the monster to understand the mode of his formation as written in Victor’s medical journal. He then leaves notes for Victor along the hunting into the arctic ice, marking words in trees and on stones, changing landscape into a text surface. Light is used to portray different tonal and modal effects to represent the dark mysteries, hidden channels and the unknown mechanisms about the monster’s creation (Bloom 121). For example, the monster’s first experiment with a still-blazing fire reveals the dual characteristic of fire and light. The use of fire and light shows that it could be used to facilitate invention, but it also turns to finish the existence of the invention. Fire is significantly used to test if the monster’s formation would be successful. At the same time, Victor alongside other villagers uses fire to kill the monster inside the building at the mountain hill. The monster also burns De Lacey’s to show his retaliation intentions to the society. This is the first instance that people start to experience his weird behaviours and stay away from him. The mood of darkness creates different contrasts between humans and the creature. Light symbolizes normal operations of daily activities while darkness spells doom to the people through mysterious activities of the monster (Bloom 121).
However, in Shelley’s original script, the creature’s violent behaviour is his sensible judgement against his mistreatment and abandonment because of his ugly presence, while in the 1931 film version shows that his complaint is due to the result made by Fritz. There are times regardless of such a fault the creature reacts to sympathy as shown to him in the extract with Maria, the young teenager at the shore. In the novel, how Frankenstein constructs the mortal are vaguely pronounced, and allusions shown through a long gradual procedure, which is formed from a mixture of innovative scientific ethics and olden alchemical experience. Consequently, the movies exactly depict the procedure by which their description of the monster is made, showing Frankenstein raiding tombs of the n dead and exhausting the tissues and body parts to recreate a new human figure. This process culminates, with the attachment of a lightning bar, to awaken the mortal, a scene notably depicted with considerable scene in the film (Hoobler and Hoobler 181).
Conclusion
Frankenstein movie and novel are among the ancient horror movies in the Gothic genre since the created the features of a horror production. For instance, the Frankenstein devil appears to communicate between himself and his maker because it only emerges everyplace Victor goes. Similarly, the theme of monstrosity is evident in the entire novel and movie as the monster takes the role of the antagonist. The monster is described as eight feet tall and horribly ugly which makes it face rejection from the society. In order to show these features, Shelly also uses different atmospheres to create a supernatural sphere, where fear is the vital notion. For example, the gloomy weather, ghostly locations and peculiar noises in the space are some of the few ways that establish wickedness in the movie. The author uses places such as the mountains and the island to stress on the theme of separation from society.
The setting produces the theme of horror by displaying awkward scenes that generate suspense to the audience. In most occasions, the setting of horror depicts the strange and weird scenarios that audience cannot endure while watching the movie. The setting displays the monster living in an isolated situation as he slowly makes its way to the world. This enables readers and viewers to witness the gradual degradation of the monster from a scientific invention to a murderous creature. There are some notable differences that arise between the plots in the movie and the novel. This entails the creation of the monster and the process of obtaining the body organs. In the movie, audience view Victor raiding the graves and acquiring body organs while in the novel, the author only describes how the organs were used. Therefore, the storyline in the two works present the essential characteristics of a horror piece of literature by illustrating the presence of a deadly monster that terrorizes the society.
Cited Works
Bann, Stephen. Frankenstein, Creation and Monstrosity. London: Reaktion Books, 1994.
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Bloom, Harold. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. New York, NY: Chelsea House Publ, 2007.
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Cobley, Jason, Declan Shalvey, and Mary W. Shelley. Frankenstein: The Graphic Novel:
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Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. The Monsters: Mary Shelley & the Curse of
Frankenstein. New York: Back Bay Books/Little, Brown, 2007. Print.
Krensky, Stephen. Frankenstein. Minneapolis: Millbrook Press, 2007.
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Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Maurice Hindle. Frankenstein or, The modern
Prometheus. Rev. ed. London: Penguin Books, 2003. Print.
