Mary Shelley
Pages 40-60
Just when I thought the story already had a depth of narrators, I began reading Chapter Six. The frame story added another dimension to itself with the introduction of its newest narrator Elizabeth. The original frame story has now became a story being told within a story to a man who is telling the story to yet another person. Confusing, I know.
However, with the re-implication of the letters as a device to tell the story from different viewpoints, Shelley is able to add even more diversity to her story. Also, it helps to bring the importance of Victor's family, especially Elizabeth, back to the forefront of the story after the preoccupation with the creature and its effects on Victor. Elizabeth's reentering into the story and the dilemma that she presents to Victor help to call him back to his roots. Yet, coming home is not as always as happy as it may seem. The accusation and subsequent death of Justine paired with the hunch that his own creation had murdered one of his family members took their respective tolls on Frankenstein. He cannot forgive himself for the creation of a beast that had led to the death of two of the people for whom he had cared the most. "Thus spoke my prophetic soul, as torn by remorse, horror, and despair, I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts," (Shelley, 60).
Again, Frankenstein foreshadows that his destiny, or his creation of life, will have awful and terrifying consequences as the story develops.
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