Question

Dreams and nightmares play a recurrent role throughout Shelley’s novel. Trace the Use of dreams throughout the book, with emphasis on what they relate to Changes in Victor’s Character?

Answer 1

Answer:

In Chapter 5 of the book, just after Victor has created the creature, he runs from it and falls into an exhausted sleep in his room. He is plagued by wild dreams. He says:

I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the graveworms crawling in the folds of the flannel.

This dream serves as a disturbing foreshadowing for the future events involving Elizabeth and all of the loved ones of Victor Frankenstein as the creature seeks revenge for being brought without consent into the world and then abruptly abandoned to fend for himself.

Explanation: