Frankenstein
Mary Shelley

One of the most interesting parts of this book is the distortion of time. It is very hard for the reader to tell how much time has elapsed between the major events of the story. Really the only way I was able to tell that Frankenstein had been away from home for six years was through Frankenstein outright saying it. "I passed through scenes familiar to my youth, but which I had not seen for nearly six years" (48). This gives the story a sense of mystery. The reader never really knows all of the information. Additionally, the reader does not know how long it has been since these event have occurred. Shelley does not use dates in her writing so it is very hard to tell how old Frankenstein is while telling the story or how much time has passed. This makes the reader try to work out what is happening and when the time is revealed there is a sense of a mystery being solved. When I found out that two years had passed since the creature had run away I was shocked. It gave some insight into Frankenstein's character that he would just prefer to forget about the horrible thing he had done rather than own up to it.