why did Victor had to stich body parts together for a Frankenstein?
Can't he just use a dead corpse n electrocute it to life?
instead of using various body parts n joining them together.
He had to replace damaged/rotten parts.
shareThe book isn't very explicit in how or what he does to bring the creature to life, but it's heavily implied if not explicitly stated that he did use various body parts from various bodies. It's not known if he harnessed lightning to give the creature life, though it does take place on a "dreary night," so who knows? I think Shelley was purposefully vague in that matter.
shareI've read that it is said that the book doesn't state that electricity was used, but it kinda does. The aspects of electricity are involved in the early stages of the book and Galvinisation is mentioned many times in the book and the movie includes a scene that isn't in the book but explains what this means. The scene with the toad/frog is how the term came about as the experiment (done by some scientist called Galvin or something similar) ran electricity across the body of dead frogs and noted that the body seemed animated. Obviously we know now that muscles work on electric impulse as that is the reason for the twitching, but back then they believed that electricity was "fluid" that ran through the body.
Ok the words that electricity was used were never explicitly stated, but it is clear that electricity was used, and would have been obvious in the age it was written with the references given.
Shelley based Frankenstein's experiments in the book on actual work done by four men--Giuseppe Aldini, Luigi Galvani, Konrad Dipple, and Andrew Ure. All of them used electricity to stimulate parts of dead bodies, and at least two of them openly expressed a desire to reanimate a corpse using electricity. Electricity was also in vogue at the time as a newly harnessed means of energy--this being the Industrial Age in the wake of Benjamin Franklin's famous kite experiment--so it's probably very likely Shelley had electricity in mind as Frankenstein's means of creating the Monster.
Carthago delenda est.