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Simile
Explanation and Analysis—Lichen on Rock:
In Chapter 13, when the Monster discovers its own ugliness and realizes people have been judging it based on its appearance rather than its nature, he describes the experience of gaining this knowledge through personification and simile:
Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling.
The Monster personifies knowledge as something that "clings" to a mind. Of course, knowledge isn't a living thing that is capable of holding onto anything, but someone's awareness of knowledge can feel so overpowering and inescapable that it's as if knowledge were alive. Similarly, the Monster likens his experience to that of lichen becoming attached to a rock. Like the lichen that becomes stuck to the rock's surface, gaining knowledge is irrevocable—one cannot easily take back or turn away from something one has learned.
The Monster’s desire to remove “all thought and feeling” suggests that the experience of knowledge is also a burden he wishes to be free of. The prejudice the Monster experiences leads him to believe in the “barbarity of man.” Like Elizabeth, William, and Victor, the Monster, too, loses innocence.
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