Frankenstein (6 Points)

 In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, she explores gothic themes and the concept of the spirit of The Sublime through her characters Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. I don’t quite fully understand the concept of The Sublime enough to go into depth about it, so for the most part I will stay on the topic of The Gothic. Although what I will say is that I think that Victor Frankenstein experiences The Sublime after both William and Justine’s deaths and the author, Mary Shelley creates the surrounding environments encompassing him to reciprocate his emotions and conflicts. The setting is heavily inspired by The Gothic as it is constantly cloudy and brooding, with its foggy and rainy atmosphere. The lone castle sitting on top of the terrifying thunderous mountain as the setting to set up an ominous tone for the rest of the dark story. 

Not to be a huge nerd but I can sort of connect this story to my favorite anime of all time, Hunter x Hunter. During the Chimera Ant arc, which is the longest arc in the anime so far, our main antagonist is the king of Chimera Ants, later named Meruem. Huge spoilers ahead but throughout this arc, our main character Gon Freccess loses someone very important to him from his childhood and is one of the few people that connect him to his absent father, who he is searching for throughout the course of the anime. As this arc progresses, we see the evil king who mercilessly murders and killed without thought, who was planning a worldwide genocide, slowly gain some sort of humanity as our main character begins to lose his through his anger seeking revenge. The interesting parallelism between a literal creature understanding why other people’s lives matter and about emotions; essentially becoming more humane as our main character who is a 12-year-old boy becomes almost unrecognizable, destroying his body and becoming a monster, mentally and somewhat physically, through pain and anger.

I can see Victor Frankenstein as both of these characters, struggling to find both his humanity and not to fall into the depths of not only his physical creation of a monster but the monster within himself. Struggling to pay for the consequences of his own actions while trying to find his place in society, the idea of how knowledge and his own curiosity was going to be his downfall.