How the Absence of Favorable Interpersonal Exchanges Leads to Disorder in FrankensteinGarden Variety Devastation:Almost all of the scholarly criticism surrounding Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has addressed, to some extent , the relationships between its characters. Often, characters' relationships with each other or with each other are compared and contrasted in various ways, but rarely has the nonspecific or universal role of relationships been analyzed in the context of the larger novel. For example, Walton versus Victor, it is something that is discussed regularly, the broader sense in which the interconnectedness of people is important and, as I argue, necessary (in the context of Frankenstein) seems particularly absent. In this article I will investigate the extraordinary non-existence of healthy and active interpersonal contact. While parts of my investigation will focus particularly on the role of friendship (or lack thereof), my scope will not be limited to friendship; I will explore the individual's apparent need for any adequate communication or meaningful exchange, whether between friends, strangers, siblings, or romantically involved people. Beyond that, I will address a number of important potential implications, as I see them, of such a narrative – namely, a narrative seemingly determined not to allow the blossoming of any relationship that might rightly be deemed healthy or appropriate. Shelley's fictional world refuses to allow even a single genuine bond between individual characters to transpire, and those few bonds of an otherwise hopeful nature are dramatically and unnaturally corrupted or snuffed out. Such relationships contribute… to the medium of paper… to influence the world. Chaos becomes, at the end of the novel, almost synonymous with communion. And as Laura P. Claridge clearly states in a piece concerning the absence of parental guidance in the novel and in which she explores the individual search for communion provoked by that absence, “Shelley insists that man can live only through communion with others; loneliness, for her, represents death” (15). Works Cited Bentley, Colene. “Family, Humanity, Politics: Theorizing the Foundations and Boundaries of Political Community in “Frankenstein.”” Criticism 47.3 (2005): 325-351. JSTOR. Network. April 20, 2014. Claridge, Laura P. “Parent-Child Tensions in “Frankenstein: The Search for Communion.”” Studies in the Novel 17.1 (1985): 14-26. JSTOR. Network. April 20, 2014.Shelley, Maria. Frankenstein. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2003. Print.