Dreams and nightmares throughout "Frankenstein" and the Industrial Revolution.

Dreams and nightmares throughout “Frankenstein” and the Industrial Revolution.

        Dreams and nightmares are two important themes all along Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein. Dreams are presented as hope, ambition and desire while nightmares are performed as consequences of these feelings. Victor Frankenstein as well as Robert Walton’s characters made clear reference to these two themes for they, both wanted to explore things in different ways, beyond human limits. These feelings that are mentioned above, could also be associated with the circumstances in which people lived and worked during the period of the Industrial Revolution.

        On the one hand, one of the phenomena that most attracted Victor’s attention was the structure of the human being, so he worked hard to discover the secret of life and immortality. After spending several months moulding a creature out of old body parts, he brought his creation to life in the secrecy of his apartment. Although Victor dreamed of creating a new race of perfect beings, as soon as he caught sight of his creation he felt horrified because he realized that he had built a monstrosity. He also became conscious that his ambitious had taken him beyond any human belief and that his dreams  became nightmares. Furthermore, when the monster murdered his brother, his best friend and his wife, he was overcome by deep remorse, guilt and vengeance. After those events, doctor Frankenstein set off in pursuit of the creature for he wanted to end up with his grotesque creation. It was during that search that Victor and Robert met for the first time and the doctor was able to tell Walton about what he had created.

        On the other hand, Robert Walton, who played an important role in the novel for Victor’s story is known through his letters to his sister, made an attempt to exceed earlier human explorations, by endeavouring to reach the North Pole. Even though Robert had similar desires to doctor Frankenstein, once he heard Victor’s narrative about the creature, he understood that the ruthless pursuit of knowledge was really dangerous. After Victor's death, Walton had the opportunity to meet and to talk with the creature because he found it weeping next to Victor’s dead body. At that moment, he found himself dangerously trapped between sheets of ice so he decided not to continue with his mission and return home because he had learnt from Victor’s example how destructive the thirst for knowledge could be. Besides, Robert was not as obsessive as Victor to endanger his life and he was not brave enough to let his passion to drive him.

        Dreams and nightmares were also related to the Industrial Revolution, more specifically to the working and living conditions of people. Even though this revolution brought a diversity of factory-produced goods improving the standard of living for the middle and upper social classes, the poor and working classes continued being in a difficult situation. That is to say apart from the fact that wages were low, the working conditions were extremely dangerous since workers were exposed to the moving parts of the machines while they were working. And what was worse, children worked between these hazardous machines since they were small enough and could fit between them. In addition, workers labored more than twelve hours a day in hot and physically exhausting places and lived in slums where roads were narrow and sewage works and washing facilities did not exist. As the atmosphere in which they lived was so polluted, diseases quickly reached and covered many of those areas, causing cholera and different types of fever.

        Taking into account the above-mentioned references to dreams and nightmares, it is well-defined that Victor enjoyed his dream and ambition of bringing his creation to life. However, after that, he painfully suffered the dreadful consequences of his monstrous creation until the end of his life. Similarly, Robert hoped to go to faraway places where no human being had ever gone, but after Victor told him the story of the creature he wisely came to the decision of returning to his home so that his dream did not turn into nightmare. And, it was also illustrated that dreams as well as nightmares were connected with the ways in which people live and work during the Industrial Revolution. Through this new technology that factories had, the middle and upper social classes fulfilled their ambition to increase their standard of living. But the poor and the working classes could not achieve the same hope, since they had to work lots of hours a day under dangerous conditions to obtain really low wages. They also had to live in inadequate and overcrowded houses under polluted and unsanitary conditions running the risk of catching any contagious disease.