Frankenstein Quote Analysis

Victor recalls his observations in charnel-houses and vaults, where he studied human decay in order to understand the transition between life and death.

The triple anaphora of 'I saw' forces the reader into Victor's relentless gaze, but the verbs he uses—'degraded,' 'wasted,' 'inherited'—turn decay into an active process with its own grotesque grammar. The final image, worms 'inheriting' the eye and brain, inverts the language of legacy and makes decomposition sound almost deliberate, as if nature has its own plan that Victor is trying to overrule.

Support a thesis that Shelley uses Victor's catalogue of decay to show his scientific detachment as a failure of feeling—he describes horror with the syntax of observation, which reveals how his ambition has already separated him from normal human revulsion.