Journey to Deportation: An Ecocritical Analysis of Frankenstein

Abstract

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus written by Mary Shelley has themes that remain profoundly relevant today, 200 years after its publication. Tracing Victor Frankenstein’s tragic loss of family and self—first through his alienation from society, then in his uneasy wanderings amid sublime landscapes, and finally in the self‑destructive drive that propels him to the Arctic—this thesis reads the novel through Buell’s Environmental Imagination. By unpacking these three “deportations,” it reveals how Shelley cautions against individualistic ambitions, a mechanical worldview, irresponsible scientific advancements and urges readers to reconsider the human-nature relationship.