The Creative Symbolism Woven into Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been passed down for centuries and is still a widely known tale. This classic has become a common childhood tale, but in its’ day was a truly creative piece. Frankenstein challenges the common and standard beliefs of religion, race, creativity and even challenges what the mind cannot fathom as a reality, in the 1800’s. There a lot of symbolisms that I found while reading and trying to understand the content. Life in the 1800’s was definitely more closed-minded than today where imagination and diversity are encouraged to express our feelings and find our â€Å"individualities†. Religion was a widely believed way of life, assuming this era in time and setting of the story the characters followed Catholicism/ and or Christianity. This left no room for alternative ideals of creation of life and the imagination of other lifestyle paths. The story of Frankenstein helps contribute to the thought of how prejudices were common in this Era, how ethnicities and barriers between cultures determined how others perceived one another. From the beginning of Frankenstein, Shelley begins to paint a picture of prominence between social classes and this sets the tone for the story as the characters are introduced with their importance. Robert Walton, for example is the first character introduced as he begins to right to his sister while on his expeditions at on the open oceans. Walton is a young, wealthy, self- educated Englishman with enough social status to form