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Allusions In Frankenstein

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Frankenstein and its Biblical References
Charles Darwin. Most people have heard of him either in their required biology classes in high school. However, a hundred years ago, most people only knew one theory about how humanity has transpired to where it is today: God. The Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 was a war between knowledge, or the theories of evolution, and God. This defiance of the so-called “natural order” by scientists has lead to serious consequences, particularly the Butler Act of 1925, in which the teaching of evolution was banned throughout the entire state of Tennessee, or even the outcast of scientists who discovered these theories. Constantly, since the findings of Darwin and many others, there has been this constant conflict between …show more content…

Victor’s rash decisions in not only reanimating the monster, but also letting the monster run free, create “monstrous” consequences for him. After the deaths of both William and Justine to the monster’s bloody hands, Victor knows that “anguish and despair had penetrated into…my heart; I bore a hell within me” (Shelley, 96). “Penetrated” means something has forced its way into something. These morbid feelings of Victor have violently forced their way into his life. “Penetrated” reinforces the sheer amount of pain that Victor feels at the death of Justine, who ultimately, he believes he killed. Victor’s feelings of both “anguish and despair” reflect the severity of the emotional and mental turmoil that Victor is enduring due to the monster. “Despair” means the loss of hope. “Hell” is where there is an absence of God. Both “Hell” and “despair” reflect Victor’s stray away from religion, hope, and humanity because of his own creation. The consequences of Victor’s actions are not only the death of the people he loves, but also involves Victor’s guilt, and the feelings that result out of his guilt. Similarly to Victor, the serpent, causing Adam and Eve to discover “evil”, faces dire consequences from God. However, unlike Victor, the serpent does not endure these consequences only by himself, but they are cast upon Adam and Eve’s offspring as well: “earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life” (The Holy Bible Douay-Rheims Version, Genesis 1. 3.14). God curses the serpent to eat dust for the rest of his life. Unlike Victor, the serpent is merely cursed physically and does not undergo the intense mental turmoil that Victor does. Both the serpent and the monster represent “evil”, as the serpent deceives Eve into eating the apple, and the monster kills

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Victor conveys that any human cannot withstand the ugliness of the face of the monster. A simile is used to compare a mummy risen from the dead is not even as close to disturbing as the despicable monster he created. The Dante references to Dante’s Inferno, Dante has come across many demons in hell but, even Frankenstein’s monster is viler than any demon in hell. In response to the monster being born Victor flees in horror. He wants nothing to do with the monster it frightens him so that he deserts it to fend for itself in his apartment not caring about any sort of trouble the monster can cause: “I then reflected, and the thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my apartment might still be in there, alive and walking about.

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1684 Words | 7 Pages

After acting on his impulse and killing the young boy he met with the same last name as the monster’s creator, the monster “‘gaze[s] on [his] victim, and [his] heart swell[s] with exultation and hellish triumph’” (Shelley 153). By juxtaposing “victim” and “exultation” as well as “hellish” and “triumph,” the monster paints himself as an unpleasant grotesque creature. His newly destructive character brings pain and conflict everywhere he goes. In fact, later in the novel, the monster kills Victor’s wife, and while pointing towards her corpse “a grin [is] on the face of the monster; he seem[s] to jeer” (Shelley 213).

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888 Words | 4 Pages

This guilt eventually turns to revenge as he comes to the realization that only he can stop the monster he created. The growing rage and desire for revenge sparks Victor, “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. ”(Shelley, 20) Victor’s sense of retribution grew so strong that he died in spite of stopping his

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1299 Words | 6 Pages

While working on the 2nd monster, Victor starts to ponder what may happen as a result of meeting his monster's request. “I was now about to form another being, of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness”(Shelly, Chapter 20). As if by fate, The Monster appears in the window of his makeshift laboratory and grins at Victor. Every emotion Victor has felt through the ordeal with The Monster flooded back to him. With all of the sadness, anger, and guilt fresh in his memory, he decides that he can not risk creating a race of devils on earth.

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1112 Words | 5 Pages

Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein examines the moral dilemmas brought on by scientific advancement. Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist in the story, uses science in unnatural ways to create a creature. Shelley poses questions about the ethics of science and the potential effects of unchecked scientific ambition through the lens of Victor's experiences. Through the use of imagery, characterization and foreshadowing, Shelley is able to convey the potential consequences of neglecting ethical consideration.

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508 Words | 3 Pages

He realizes that him acting on his careless decisions can cause many conflicts. The dead calmness of inaction and certainty, a weight of despair and remorse that pressed on Victor’s heart. Victor states, “Justine died, she rested, and I was alive” (85). Victor can’t bear the fact that his decision to create the monster had so many consequences. So many emotions that victor had felt.

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672 Words | 3 Pages

He uses the little that he knows to fuel his hatred towards humans and his creator. This shows the exponential growth of the problems that Victor has created as a result of his desire for knowledge. Not only did he create the destructive monster, but now the monster is using a hunger for knowledge, the very thing that created it, to do even more damage. This root cause is linked to everything that is causing Victor’s suffering. The monster also compares his relationship to Victor to that of God and Adam, wishing that he had the same supplication to his creator that Adam did, “I remembered Adam’s supplication to his creator.

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768 Words | 4 Pages

The monster, however, discovers Victor and mourns over his death, and he can’t fathom the fact that his creator has died, this would also eventually leads the monster to kill himself. Although he finally got rid of the root of his problems, the monster was still initially a good being and felt sorrow for what had occurred (finally some remorse for a death), which only continues to assist in depicting how the creature was morally ambiguous even at the time of his

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683 Words | 3 Pages

They each wanted revenge that the other had createdHowever, revenge brings nothing but a craving for closure, demonstrated as the monster grieves by Victor’s bedside as he died: “I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery” (Shelly 165). The creature spent so long chasing revenge, that he ran out of time. He had no choice but to forgive the creator who had made him become such a monster. The hunt for achieving vengeance against his creator kept him alive, it drove him to push forward, it gave him a purpose. All that Victor wanted to do was avenge his loved ones who were killed, but through tormenting Victor, the monster morbidly felt a sense of peace in his company.

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1370 Words | 6 Pages

Victor falls ill with anxiety, and as a result of Victor’s neglect the monster begins to destroy his life. Even when the monster confronts Frankenstein, threatening that he “will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of [Frankenstein’s] remaining friends, 102" Victor does not acknowledge the problem he has caused, the literal embodiment of his anxiety. He does not attempt to confront the monster head on or alleviate his loneliness, both a form of acknowledgement and thus a healthy way to respond to his fears. Instead, he once again pretends the monster doesn’t exist which only further enrages and empowers him. Once again, this mirrors the fact that when fears and anxiety go undealt with they will only grow and confirms that the monster is the embodiment of this

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1472 Words | 6 Pages

Speaking of Victor, his reaction to his creation, once it is alive, is the first example of this mistreatment that would begin shaping the monster’s morality from right to wrong. When Victor first saw the monster, he was so appalled by the creature’s appearance that he quickly “escaped, and rushed downstairs.” and “took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which [he] inhabited” where he “remained during the rest of the night” (Shelly 59). This abandonment by Victor is the start of the pain and anguish that the monster would feel, and thus as those feelings continued in the monster, more desires for vengeance were eventually created.

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2264 Words | 10 Pages

But his narcissistic tendencies got the best of him leading to a “monster” in the making. Victor knew the consequences of leaving the creature behind but he did it anyway allowing the creature to ruin Victor’s life. As his creation roamed freely it took revenge killing many and leaving its owner with regret, guilt, and remorse for his past actions and decisions that were caused by his wrongdoings. But Victor also feels a lack and sense of empathy towards others as he seems to only care about himself as he made a decision that would impact him

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455 Words | 2 Pages

Nature gave victor his punishment. He was cursed by nature for his endless greed. Yet the monster was punished for his existence ? The monster followed Victor everywhere he went and slaughtered many innocent relatives of Victor. Granted the monster wanted a companion.

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838 Words | 4 Pages

The monster reads a novel Paradise Fallen and tells Victor that he is supposed to be his God, and the monster should take on the role of Adam, instead he feels like a fallen angel who is left alone and abandoned, resulting in only darkness and death. He later requests for a female companion from Frankenstein, however he ends uf refusing and destroying what little he did make of the companion and threw it into the water. Despite the monster's humbling and vulnerable speech the monster still can't shake his initial thoughts and can only see him as a “devil”, “wretch”, who he can not help but to “violently abandon him” (James 357). In the end scholars can only see the flaws in Victor at this point in the novel because of his constant forms of rejection. These acts of denial and hatred only lead Victor towards a fiery death and forcing the monster to isolation and darkness.

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962 Words | 4 Pages

This immediate regret proves that even working day and night, losing his time and sanity, only now does he realize the major mistake he has been created. Frankenstein was so focused on creating the creature that he never thought what he would do with it afterwards. Another example is when the creature kills William, Victor’s adopted brother, and Justine, his adopted sister, is sentenced to death: “Anguish and despair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within me which nothing could extinguish. . .And on the morrow, Justine died” (75). This consequencial guilt highlights how, when Victor symbolizes the creature as “a hell within me”, he sees the creature as the pure evil monster that represents his bad side.

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