"The information I had obtained was of a nature rather to direct my endeavours so soon as I should point them towards the object of my search, than to exhibit that object already accomplished. I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead and found a passage to life, aided only by one glimmering and seemingly ineffectual light" (31).
"The Arabian who had been buried with the dead" is a reference to the Fourth voyage of Sinbad the Sailor in the Middle Eatern collection of folk tales The One Thousand and One Nights. On his fourth voyage, Sinbad finds himself on an island inhabited by a civilization of people whose tradition it is to bury the remaining spouse alive with the deceased partner. When Sinbad's wife falls ill and dies, Sinbad is lowered into the tomb along with her. Once in the tomb, Sinbad witnesses death and decay in all forms until he hears a stirring that he follows, only to find a way out of the tomb, to find the passage of life.
Shelley probably chooses the story of Sinbad because it is so similar to Frankenstein's voyages in the tomb, as he watches bodies decaying in his search for the spark of life. And similar to Sinbad, Frankenstein feels he has found a way out when he discovers that one secret that has been ever hidden from man.
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