Characters
The person Victor dreamed he embraced in Ingolstadt, whose lips turned 'livid with the hue of death'
Who is Elizabeth Lavenza?
The creature's hair was lusturous black and described using this term for movement
What is 'flowing'?
The presence of Henry Clerval momentarily dissolves Victor's feverish state and restores his sanity, representing this vital thematic counterpoint to Victor's chosen scientific existence
What is Human connection?
The two acts passed by the British Parliaments that link to body parts
What is the Reform Bill and Anatomy Act 1832
The term for Victor's retrospective recounting of the Creature's birth and Kathy's recollection
What is an Unreliable narrator
The person who appeared in Victor's nightmare, wrapped in a shroud and of flannels
Who is Caroline Beaufort?
The colour of the creature's teeth, which Victor called 'luxuriance'
What is 'pearly whiteness'?
The immediate flight of Victor from his creation echoes the moment in this biblical text when the first human is cast out of paradise for a grave transgression.
What is the 'Fall of Man' and how does it link to Frankenstein
In Frankenstein, the Creature's grotesque appearance triggers Victor's disgust. In NLMG, the clones are similarly reviled, but this rejection is manifested not physically but through their enforced social and functional segregation.
The type of sickness that confined Victor for several months, during which he raved on the monster
What is nervous fever?
The Creature's opening it's eye, followed by Victor's disgust and flight, establishes this central Gothic motif of two intertwined, psychologically linked characters.
What is the Gothic Double or Doppelgänger
The part in Chapter 5 where Victor flees from when the creature is born is a direct comparison to his childhood
What is the Abnegation of parental responsibility? (Parental Responisbility/Nurturing)
The preference for the beautiful and Victor's horror at the Creature's misshapen form directly engages with this 18th-century aesthetic concept of inspiring awe mixed with terror.
What is the Aesthetic Prejudice?
Victor's act of creating a single being, followed by his catastrophic guilt, is an expression of Individual Hubris. The clones' existence is a critique of systemic moral failure and the slow, institutional normalization of this.
What is Dehumanization?
This person's arrival is described as restoring Victor to a feeling of "calm and serene joy," which contrasts sharply with the horror provoked by the monster's appearance
Who is Henry Clerval
The description of Victor's failed ideal and the subsequent nightmare involving his mother and Elizabeth, illustrates the psychoanalytic term for the repudiated aspect of the self, which is projected onto the Creature.
The concept of the 'Das Unheimliche' or the Uncanny
The gothic conventions used in the begining of the Chapter 5?
- Images of light (Candle burning out)
- Colour (Black lips, yellow skin)
- Pathetic Fallacy (Dreary night)
The quote from the 'The Ancient Mariner'
Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.
Shelley uses hyperbole and a sublime description of horror in Chapter V. Ishiguro contrasts this with understatement and an emphasis on the mundane, characteristic of this subverted literary genre.
What is Dystopian Realism?
The anatomical study by Victor that his failure to "infuse a spark of being" into the inanimate material and the subsequent description of the creature is an allusion to what form of scientific study
What is human physiognomy?
The use of colourism in Frankenstein used to other the creature
What is the creature appearance of “yellow skin” and “watery eyes” in Frankenstein's creation,with a description that suggests a non-European “other” and forms a key feature of colourism. This allowing Victor to separate his monster from humanity and justify his intense disgust throughout the book
The use of Liminality in Frankenstein
What is Victor's abrupt shift from the sublime horror of the Creature's animation to Henry Clerval's presence. This signifies his permanent estrangement from societal integration and foreshadowing his final moments in the Arctic.
What is the significance of the Ancient Mariner
What is the Romantic-era poem that is an alluded tto in the letter and is later echoed by Victor's reaction to the Creature's animation underscores the theme of a transgression against natural order and is followed by inescapable guilt and isolation
While Victor's perspective in Chapter V is that of a terrified creator and Kathy H.'s perspective is that of a veteran, using the specific term Carer to establish her role within this narrative technique.
What is First-Person Retrospective