“Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realize. 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.”
-p 53
For a scientist, Frankenstein is exceptionally adept at eloquent speech. In this passage, Shelley includes two separate cases of personification which work together to create a rather primal portrayal of a hunt. The moon appears as an indifferent onlooker, watching Frankenstein as he desperately and hopelessly attempts to defy nature in his creation. I find it interesting that Frankenstein describes his endeavor not as a pursuit, but as a hunt. If it were merely a pursuit, then Frankenstein would simply seek to attain the secrets of nature and capture it for his own use. Instead, his endeavor is a hunt: he does not seek simply to capture the secrets of nature; he seeks to kill nature itself. Although he does not realize it at the time—and to be honest, I doubt he realizes it even as he speaks—the true meaning of these words gives a sense of foreshadowing to the ungodliness of his scientific pursuit. Frankenstein does not simply seek to understand nature; he seeks to completely and utterly destroy it.
