Fire in Frankenstein

The concept of fire comes up a lot in Frankenstein, and it's what I've decided to write my essay about, so I thought I'd do this blog post about fire, to help myself get some ideas more developed.

The first time that we can relate fire to the story (at least that I can think of; I'll may have to go skim through for more references) is when Dr. Frankenstein brings life to the monster. Frankenstein's creation of a new being is akin to Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and giving it to man. Fire is man's gift, is his to use and control. Frankenstein gives life to the monster, but not power over fire.

I think I just contradicted myself there. Life is separate from power over fire; all animals have life, but only humans control fire. We see throughout the story how the monster interacts with and takes comfort from fire, but can never wield it himself. So, fire is man's. The monster is given life but not given fire. Frankenstein can create a body, infuse it with life, but he can't give it the gift of fire, which in this sense I think is equivalent to a soul. The monster, therefore, can never achieve equal status with humans as he so desires. He has a fundamental part missing. He may be made out of 100% real recycled human parts, but he doesn't have what you can only get supernaturally: a soul.

Perhaps this is why he is immediately ostracized and hated by any human who sees him. They can sense that he doesn't belong. They can see that, even beyond his ugly features, he is not one of them. He is something to be shunned, to be hunted.

Because he doesn't share our gift of fire.



The monster's first encounter with fire is in the woods: he discovers a campfire left by some woodsmen. He is enthralled by it, attracted to the warmth it provides. This is interesting, I think, because we saw that he was getting along relatively fine in the cold before he found the fire. He didn't need it to stay alive, and he wasn't using it to cook, so really he has no need for the fire, but he is still drawn to it and very reluctant to leave it.

Now, we see that when the time does come for the monster to leave the fire, he is torn. He wants to stay with the fire -- his connection to humanity, even if he doesn't quite realize it -- but he also needs to leave. What he can't do, though, is take fire with him or figure out how to recreate fire when he gets wherever he is going. He can't because fire is not his to control. It is man's.

Anyways that's where I'm going to leave off for now. There are still plenty more instances where fire comes into play in the book that illustrate these points and probably even some others.