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         The Greenwood Cemetery is a national historic landmark founded in 1839. It was first to be known as a rural cemetery since neighborhood churchyards began to get overcrowded. The cemetery’s peculiarity attracted many people internationally and therefore became a prestige location for burials. The atmosphere of the cemetery  creates various different moods in relation with dawn to dusk. One literary text that validates the atmosphere is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley because it shows the relationship of living and dead. The graveyard is a final resting place of the deceased whereas in the literary text, the main antagonist Frankenstein is shown to tamper with the dead corpses in the hopes to construct a new creation and play the role of God. In chapter 4 p. 95, Frankenstein quotes, “One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.” This quote indicates the mood of Frankenstein by displaying some emotion of fear as to where the moon’s light reveals his queer intentions versus the fact he is also cloaking his experiment in the dusk to gain forbidden knowledge by robbing the graves.

         On Chapter 4 p.89, Frankenstein also quotes,“Darkness had no effect upon my fancy, and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm.” This describes Victor’s depiction of the grave sites that he was stealing bodies from. He felt no respect for the dead bodies that he would deconstruct to make into his creature. Graves are a place for people to visit their dead loved ones and from being at the Cemetery, there is a strong feeling of respect to not disrupt their resting place. Victor saw no evil in disrupting the burial sights for his own scientific discoveries. In conclusion, the mood of dusk has vast secrets and unknown activities which are better left unexplored unlike dawn. Dawn reveals the purity and impurity within the dead and the living; a contingent relationship within the cemetery space.

 

 

 

 

 

Work Cited:

Mary Shelley (Author), Douglas Clegg (Introduction) and Harold Bloom (Afterword)

Signet Classics Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus

     New York: Penguin Group, October 2013. Print.