Mary Shelley included a stanza from Coleridge's "The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner" in chapter five of her novel Frankenstein.
This inclusion is found after Victor has found success in re-animating life and fled
from his loft (given his fear of the Creature).
This is the
excerpt of the poem Shelley includes:
“Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth
walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And
turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth
close behind him
tread.”
Given his fear of the
Creature, Victor (while walking the streets of Ingolstadt) contemplates upon the lines
of the poem. The poems exhibits his own feelings regarding his self-isolation and the
fear he possesses regarding the Creature following him.
"Like one who, on a lonely road / Doth walk
in fear and dread"
Victor is out, alone,
late at night. He is trying to escape from the Creature he left in his flat (who is
fears and dreads will find him).
"And,
having once turned round, walks on / And turns no more his
head"
This allows readers to create a mental
image of Victor walking along the road at night, turning his head once, and deciding
that if he turns again he will (or may) see the Creature. His growing fears force him to
no longer look at what could be following him.
"Because he knows a frightful fiend / Doth
close behind him tread"
Compounding the two
previous lines, the poem illustrates why Victor refuses to turn around to see if he is
being followed. His fear of being followed is too strong to be solidified by his turning
and actually seeing the Creature.
Essentially, the poem
speaks to the great fear Victor possesses regarding the possibility of the Creature
following him. Given the prior allusions to the poem (Walton speaking of the mariner in
his opening letters), the insertion of the poem here not only proves appropriate given
Victor's fears, it also illustrates the doppelganger effect (as Walton and Victor being
parts or mirror images of each other).
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