Frankenstein Creature Coming Alive

This extract is from Frankenstein, a novel written by Mary Shelley and published in 1818. In this passage, Dr. Frankenstein attends to his creature coming alive, and finds himself disgusted by what he spent the last two years of his life to work on, instead of being proud. In order to create this disgust and terror in the reader, Shelley uses different tools, which we will try to identify.

First, a Gothic atmosphere is planted in the very beginning of the text : the author uses all the horror films clichés to set a tense mood. She describes "the [pattering] rain" and the "nearly burnt out [candle]" on "a dreary night of November". All these elements, that seem straight out of Michael Jackson's Thriller, match to bring up the nervous mood in the reader. The planted décor gives us the impression to be in a cemetery by a full-moon night. Shelley actually incorporates a grave-yard in Dr. Frankenstein's dream, a bit further in the extract. She strengthens the horror sense describing "the grave-worms crawling" that make us think of dead human chest underground creatures feed on. She also scatters some hints to bloody films adding "instruments of life" and "the lifeless thing" to the setting. We can imagine a scalpel covered with blood, brain-matter on scissors and human body parts on the table that weren't incorporated in the creature. Shelley gives the décor the appearance of a torture room. The reader becomes more in more terrified by the scene and the most sensitive ones might also feel uncomfortable, and share Frankenstein's "anxiety that almost [amounts] to agony".

Then, the author reveals some aspects of her characters, mainly Dr. Frankenstein's insane side. She describes him as "in the greatest agitation […] languor and extreme weakness". To begin with, the "breathless horror" that he feels for his creature, which he should have loved for he spent two years "[selecting] his features as beautiful", shows how madness is taking control over him. He finally