Doppelganger in franlenstein

* Discuss the ‘Doppelganger’ motif in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

A doppelganger is a German term, literary meaning a ‘double-goer’, an apparition or double of a living person. This idea can be interpreted in a number of ways, and this essay will discuss how Mary Shelley had used it in her novel Frankenstein, first published in 1818.
The story of the novel is about a man namedVictor Frankenstein whose idealistic motives and desires of dabbling with nature resulted in the creation of a grotesque monster, from whom he recoils in horror. Victor keeps his creation of the monster a secret. The ugly creation of Victor Frankenstein is intelligent and sensitive. After being abandon by his creator, the monster attempts to integrate into human social patterns, but people areafraid of him. His feeling of loneliness compels him to seek revenge against his creator. By creating and abandoning the monster, Victor Frankenstein brings about his own ruin. The monster murders his most loved ones as revenge. Mary Shelley established a symbiotic relationship between the two characters. From the moment of the monster’s creation, both of them cannot live without at least the thoughtof the other. Frankenstein is haunted by the guilt of creating such a monstrosity who kills his family, while the creature wants vengeance and punishment for his creator. Nowadays some people confuse Frankenstein with the monster, and what is true is that we got pairs in the novel. Apart from the doppelganger found in these two characters, Shelley had introduced a second doppelganger betweenFrankenstein and Walton. Robert Walton is who opens and closes Frankenstein story by a series of letters. He is a scientific doing an expedition in the Artic, where he met Frankenstein by chance in the Artic, who told him his story that he later recorded. He is interested in the possibilities of science just as Frankenstein. In the novel, the doppelganger motif between Frankenstein and the creature andFrankenstein and Walton both represent different facets of Frankenstein where, in essence, Walton is the cause and the creature is the effect.

The doppelganger motif plays a very important role in Shelley’s work. In the novel, both characters have a sense of fault which brings them into a downward spiral which ends in their own deaths. When Frankenstein creates the monster, he begins to sharecertain features with him and as their lives progress their emotions and passions merge together as well. The reader can see the merging of these two characters by the exact actions and mannerisms taking place between them. The first emotion they share is misery. Frankenstein feels very miserable when his little brother dies, and he describes it like this:

"Anguish and despair had penetratedinto the core of my heart; I bore a hell within me which nothing could extinguish". (pp 97. Vol II. Chap. I)

Likewise, the creature exclaimed:

"All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment: I, like the archfiend, bore a hell within me". (pp 138. Vol II. Chap. VIII)

The reader can observe in these two quotes the same expression ‘bore a hell within me’. Another clear example of this is whenFrankenstein describes himself:

"I gnashed my teeth and ground them together, uttering a groan that came from my inmost soul". (pp 97. Vol II, Chap. I)
“When I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed” (pp 95. Vol. II, Chap. I)

When Frankenstein meets the creature he describes him using thesame word ‘gnash’ and the misery that once protruded the two characters is evolving itself into a blind rage:

"The monster saw my determination in my face, and gnashed his teeth in the impotence of anger". (pp 172. Vol III, Chap. III)

This duplicity can lead the reader to think that the creature is Frankenstein’s double. The two characters are progressing down the same road of emotion....