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Alienation In Frankenstein

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How does Mary Shelley’s construction of the secondary characters reflect upon the protagonist? Throughout Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, character parallels and analogies between Victor Frankenstein and the creature are strongly emphasized. More evidently, the character doubles between the creator, Victor, and his creature are presented through their demeanor, their desires, and their demands. Shelley emphasizes parallelisms of nature, alienation and vengeance to underscore their similarities, leading some readers to interpret Victor and his creature being so similar that indeed, they are the same person. Both lonely and outcasts in the world, Victor and his creation live forlorn and dreary lives, hungry for the love of another, desperate for …show more content…

At times, Victor almost makes it clear that he has given up, ready to commit suicide. When the creature is at a higher point, Victor is at a lower point, suffering with fevers and cold chills. Physically, when Victor is drained, his body is exhausted too. He goes through so much trying to avenge the death of those the creature has murdered that his body can’t take it anymore. Regretting his choices, Victor cries, “...tears, the first I had shed for many months, streamed from my eyes, and I resolved not to fall before my enemy without a bitter struggle.” Contemplating suicide, Victor realizes that his life has become empty. The void that only family and love could have filled is widened even more. His chances for happiness are dead; everything he has ever loved is vanished. The guilt Victor feels is uncomparable; the creature he made became a cold blooded killer. In a sense, one can argue that Victor is responsible and maybe, if he hadn't made the creature in his lab that gloomy day, he could have been happy. Similarly, the creature wishes he’d never been created. To Victor he cries , "Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery" (16.1). His life has overflowed with sadness and hate. The creature, by nature was good and pure. He learned solely from curious observation and only asked for love in return. After constant rejection from society for so long, the creature chooses to leave humanity for ever, foreshadowing his suicide. Over Victor Frankenstein’s deathbed, on Robert Walton’s boat he says, "Fear not that I shall be the

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The cold, calculated nature speaks to the Monster’s state. He has become the same thing he once found incomprehensible, ran from and was hurt by. The systematic destruction of Victor’s life evens the scales. It provides the Monster with an opportunity to address his abandonment issue, which lies just below the surface, while not actually addressing it. However, taking a life, and its significance, remain an aspect of life the Monster overlooks.

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Character Foils: Victor and The Monster Often in a literary work, authors use minor characters to emphasize specific traits and characteristics of a main character. In Mary Shelley’s best selling novel Frankenstein, the monster is a minor reflection of Victor Frankenstein. Victor’s personality traits from when he was a child, and as an adult, are carried over and placed into his creation unintentionally by Victor himself.

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He finds this “closure” by making sure that Victor always lives in fear, sadness, and loneliness, then dies at his hands. Victor also sought revenge on the creature, but it was because of what the creature was doing to get revenge on him. As seen on page 74, Victor says, “I wished to see him again, that I might wreak the utmost extent of anger on his head, and avenge the deaths of William and Justine.” He says this because the creature had killed William and framed Justine Moritz. Justine ended up being convicted of murder and electrocuted.

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Consequently, Victor creates a monster that later ruins his life and the lives of those around him in the story mostly due to his poor variety of decisions. These facts proves that Victor’s downfall is most likely caused by his failure of balancing his ego by allowing his Id and superego get to him. In the novel

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After seeing Victor dead on the ship he cried and said, “I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death”(p 198)? Obsession was also the monsters downfall, he became a ruthless killer for the sole purpose of

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Finally, Victor shatters his life when he ultimately causes his own death. As a result of his mind being consumed with grief and revenge, he becomes morose, melancholy, and eventually lifeless. Victor allows the monster to rummage his head, and he permits his creation to drive him crazy; consequently, he slowly kills

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Victor mentions how he had to make the creature large so it didn’t slow his work. Then when the creature comes to life, Victor doesn’t explain how actually large it was (Clark 257). One can then see that Victor only uses physical characteristic in describing the creature. Victor then continues to run out of the room and is seen that he is a coward. When he runs one sympathises with the creature because it is similar to a newborn child.

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Victor has been cursed by the devil. “I was cursed by some devil, and carried about with me my eternal hell.” (173) Victor stated that as he knew his life was over in defeat by the creature. Victor has been praying for death and succumbs to pneumonia with Walton. Victor then accepts that the creature is determined to live.

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When he began to make his creature, Victor completely secluded himself from the outside world, cutting of contact with other individuals for months at a time no matter who the person was. He neglects the idea of nature and the rights and wrongs of what he was doing because of how focused he was in creating this monster. Right after Victor created the life of the monster, he then realized what he had done and just how hideous and inadequate it is compared to what Victor wanted to make. Victor flees his lab, not wanting to take any responsibility for what he has done, but when he inevitably returns, and the monster was nowhere to be found, Victor felt rather joyous, yet eventually fell ill. As soon as Victor had become sick, he then realized just what he had let out into the world and just how much of a mess it can make for himself and society itself.

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In the beginning Victor just wanted to learn how to create life, but when he does, he creates an ugly creature that he has no love for. When the Creature is alone, he must learn everything from scratch, but what he learns first give him a grim perspective on humanity. These two paths cross to cause everyone Victor loves to die by the Creature's hands and in the end their own lives are not spared. The double-edged sword is shown throughout the book by Victor's actions by creating the monster to the creature committing murders. All of this matters in the end because all this back and forth will lead to their own

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Karl Marx's teachings of “alienated labor” can be applied to dissect the social-economic underling factors of many works of literature across a vast variety of genres. Sections of Marx’s, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Selected Writings 75-112), and Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, forms a connection to Marxism that can be easily detected. As we layout the Marxist critique of Frankenstein, a key term to remember will be “alienation.” “Alienation”- the process where the worker is alienated from his/her own product by being exploited by his/her Capitalist manufacturer; product of the worker’s labor no longer belongs to the worker.

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In the novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the two main characters, Victor Frankenstein and his creature, both display a sense of moral ambiguity. Each character has committed both good and evil alike, and neither knew the consequences of what they had done. However, Victor Frankenstein is generally the morally ambiguous character by his treatment of his creation and his own imperious personality. He wanted to be able to help science by recreating life or bringing it back, but at the same time, he did not want to consider the consequences of doing so. Victor tries to prove himself as a good moral character in the relationship between his creation and himself.

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In reality, he is disgusted by the sight of his creation so he abandons it leaving it all alone in the world without any guidance and runs away to the next room. Victor himself suffered from being a social outcast and now he bestowed the same feeling onto the creature by abandoning him. By treating the creature as an outcast, “he will become wicked … divide him, a social being, from society, and you impose upon him the irresistible obligations—malevolence and selfishness” (Caldwell). Not only is Victor selfish for abandoning his creature but he is shallow as well. Instead of realizing that he achieved his goal of bringing life to an inanimate body he runs way because of how hideous it is.

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Frankenstein In most fiction stories, there are always two characters that do or do not represent different sides of the same character. Frankenstein is a short gothic horror story written by Mary Shelley. Shelley writes about a scientist who created a being from dead body parts. Victor Frankenstein as the protagonist of the story created a monstrous character that was a reflection of himself.

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Victor in the very beginning on the novel keeps to himself and mainly characterized by his loneliness due in part because of his desire to complete his work, this causes him to stay away from people for long periods of time staying in solidarity for mass portions of the day . Victor eventually finishes his work but his deeply horrified by the disgusting nature of the creature that he made. His monster does get out of control and kills his younger brother. Victor knows that the monster did this and because of this he feels responsible for the death of his brother and the subsequent death of another. Eventually Victor angers the monster and because of this Victor then loses his friend, wife and father to the hands of the monster.

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