Frankenstein Language Analysis, The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde

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Frankenstein Language Analysis

"I spent the following day roaming the valley. I stood besides the sources of the Arveiron, which take their ride in a glacier, that with slow pace is advancing down from the summit of the hills, to barricade the valley. The abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me; the icy wall of the glacier overhung me; a few shattered pines were scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial Nature was broken only by brawling waves, or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of the avalanche, or the cracking reverberated along the mountains of the accumulated ice, which, through the silence working of immutable laws, was ever anon rent and torn as if it had been a plaything in their hands." (Shelley 86)

After the unjust trial of Justine, Victor clears his head by wandering the glaciers in the mountains.

Shelley's diction suggests the overwhelming effect nature takes on Victor. The long, run-on sentences overwhelm the reader with description just as nature takes an awe-inspiring effect on Victor. Nature literally surrounds him, as "the abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me; the icy wall of the glacier overhung me; a few shattered pines were scattered around." To Victor, nature is his companion just like a person, and appears once as a proper noun: "Nature."

The mountainous setting also presents several ideas that reoccur throughout the novel. For example, Victor mentions "a few shattered pines were scattered around me," reminiscent of the "blasted tree" from chapter II. The blasted tree is used a metaphor for Victor's awakened thirst for knowledge, as he becomes fascinated with the powers of electricity, and eventually natural philosophy. As more shattered trees appear around Victor, the idea of a thirst for knowledge reoccurs.