Starting off with a credits roll that comes straight from a 1930's era film, Young Frankenstein would appeal to any connoisseur of early horror films. The primary message of the story being the unthawing of a clenched, cold and stiff personality, I find it more interesting to focus on how the film uses and then creates its own tropes.
When Frankenstein is riding the train to New York, a husband and wife argue about the behavior of someone they know, possibly their child; the film whirls into a train ride into Transylvania and the exact same conversation appears to happen again, with german sounding participants. The subject is ambiguous, but the meaning of parents arguing over allowing someone (probably their child) do something or not is foreshadowing for the rest of the story. Allowing the beast out or sedating it, allowing your hair to be mussed or being satisfied with a tame elbow touching another elbow.
The running gags of the pronunciation of Frankenstein's name and Frau Blücher's association with horses naying are set ups for use later in the film. They punctuate situations and are self-contained tropes within the film.
A cold hand is presented in the monster when Frankenstein meets a constable and later in the detective's mechanical arm. The detective setting his finger on fire deliberately, a dead piece of wood, while the monster's finger is set alight and is obviously alive and the cause of pain creates a symmetry that applies to how we live our lives. An overall arc to the story is that we should embrace life, to allow for a little pain along with the pleasures and that if we don't engage with the world around us (even if there is some pain) that there is much more good to be found overall.
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