Sunday, November 18, 2012

Frankenstein: foreshadow

Throughout all of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, she consistently uses foreshadowing as a literary tool.  She makes the reader want to press on in the story with the constant hints she gives of what is to come.  She has the characters make references, or look in retrospect, on an event which has not yet been discussed.  "I prophesied truly, and failed only in one single circumstance, that in all the misery I imagined...I did not conceive the hundredth part of the anguish I was destined to endure" (Shelley, 49).  Victor makes this remark after he was told of his brother's murder.  This excerpt from the story made me even more curious about what is going to happen.  Victor had just been told that his young brother had been killed.  He knew that his family was in mourning and was suffering greatly.  And yet, despite this, he says he had no idea at the time what pain and suffering was to come his way.  What more could he endure?  What, besides the murder of his sibling, could make him feel even more miserable?  He also says that William and Justine were "the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts" (Shelley, 60).  Who else will be killed by the end of this story?

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