Explanation Post: Henry’s Bones

The section on Henry’s death in Frankenstein left me pretty underwhelmed. Immediately after the fact, Shelley very rapidly shifts to Frankenstein’s ensuing depression and, though Henry is obviously the cause, he isn’t really the focus. I wanted to give Henry a more fitting tribute. Since we never really learn the details of what happened to Henry after his death, I may have embellished that he was eventually buried in Ireland and never brought back to Geneva, but again, Frankenstein as a narrator, in the middle of his episode, didn’t give me much to work with. Leaving Henry there in Ireland seemed to me to emphasize how overcome Frankenstein had become by this point. So I used an unnamed villager as a narrator to tell how the whole town felt about this event and also to reflect the mystery surrounding it, and tried to match the feel of the book with the language my narrator uses.

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