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Examples Of A Morally Ambiguous Character In Frankenstein

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A morally ambiguous character is one that isn’t entirely good or evil. I would say that the Monster is the best example of a morally ambiguous character in Frankenstein by Mary Shelly. The Monster commits several violent crimes despite his love of nature and people. Mary Shelly uses the Monster’s moral ambiguity as the backbone of her novel, Frankenstein, to display certain tropes about humanity. The Monster commits several violent actions. After Victor abandons him, he tries to assemble some resemblance of a life by traveling and learning about society, something that Victor failed to teach him. While on his travels, he takes his first casualty. “Frankenstein! You belong to my sworn enemy—to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; …show more content…

Victor abandoned the Monster at his birth and since the Monster has had no favorable interactions with humans. He wants to learn what he was never taught. “What chiefly struck me was the gentle manners of these people, and I longed to join them, but dared not…I would remain quietly in my hovel, watching and endeavoring to discover the motives which influenced their actions” He spies on a family for months trying to decipher how humans interact with each other. He also knew that joining them would most likely elicit the same reaction Victor had. To try and prove his caring soul, he provides extra wood for the family and avoids any direct communication until he deems it is the right time. He decides to talk to the blind father since he knows he will only be judged on his humanity. His plan is working until the end. Revealing that he had been stalking the members of the household, he completely loses the fathers good graces. “Great God! Exclaimed the old man. Who are you... At that instant the cottage door was opened, and Felix, Safie, and Agatha entered. Who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me” (136). The family’s reaction to the Monster appearance speaks to Mary Shelly’s goal to expose the shallowness of humanity. Both Victor and the family ran away from the Monster's hideous face, but did not give him a chance to reveal what a kind and gentle creature he is. Retorts like this are the root of the Monster’s horrific

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In conclusion, Mary Shelly uses her great words and flow of her sentences to show how Victor has changed throughout the book. Victor at first seems happy and has a love of nature. In contrast, when the monster completes his revenge Victor is isolated from society and this causes him to have loneliness. Mary Shelly compares Victor to a romantic hero. He has some specific traits that apply both to the romantic hero and himself.

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When he finally creates the creature, he runs, consumed by “breathless horror and disgust” (Shelly 35). He - in his sickly state - failed to see the true nature of what he has made, and immediately regrets it. Furthermore, when the creature confronts Frankenstein, Frankenstein shows cruelty to his creation, screaming, yelling and flat out refusing to listen to it, “ Begone! I will not hear you.”

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Augustine has many diffenrt definitions of what is evil but “evil must always be understood as a defect, a corruption, or a perversion of what was created good”(Lawhead 132). One of Augustine’s problems of evil is that of moral evil. Moral evil is “human perversity” or “genuine evil”(Lawhead 132) because all other evil is apparently evil but “moral evil is the product of the human will”(Lawhead 132). The Monster has been deprived true goodness and love ever since his creation because his creator hated him from the moment he saw him. The Monster according to Augustine would be part of moral evil.

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Victor Frankenstein turns away from his responsibilities by ignoring the existence of his creation. Throughout the novel, Victor is constantly running away from the monster and not giving him attention, which resulted in the monsters change of personalities. For example, in page 71 the creation said, “All men hate the wretched; how must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us.” This quote suggests that because of the ignorance of Victor the monster began to become evil and have the urge to seek

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Also, kudos to Victor for making his fiend feel like "an unfortunate and deserted creature; [The monster looks] around [with] no relation or friend upon earth.[... ][He ’s] full of fears, for if [he fails] there, [he’s] an outcast in the world forever" (Shelley 122). Because of the villagers, the monster had become more educated, finding an efficient way to escape his eternal isolation. He first chose to confront the blinded man since he had no reaction when the monster approached him.

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What’s a man without his family? The most influential factor in anyone’s young life is their family, but all families are not created equal. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley provides an interesting commentary on how families should raise their children. This text compares two families with drastically different parenting styles. Throughout the text Mary Shelly suggests that a structured “formal” education is corruptive, while a more natural education is favorable.

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The monster is spurned by society because of his horrific appearance, his body, alone and hated, unfit for the company of strangers, just as Frankenstein fears he is. He is miserable which makes the hatred grow, as he says, “all men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!” In fact, this wretchedness and enforced isolation is the monster’s main character trait, parallel to the isolation being Frankenstein’s biggest fear. Now that Victor is in college, he does not have his family to fall back upon for affection.

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Therefore, Victor is the real monster. Humanity is demonstrated through the people who have relations with the creature and Victor. Victor’s family is close and

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The monster continues by reassuring the creator of his independent intelligence and power over the creature by telling Frankenstein, “This you alone can do”. Here, the creature assumes a role of submissiveness and reliance on Frankenstein. Frankenstein’s monster gains the sympathy of the reader who, despite condemning the murder of innocent people, commiserate with the lonely creature who is in search of an acquaintance, which he will likely never find. The monster also displays power and aggressiveness over Frankenstein; “You are my creator; but I am your master; obey!” The monster wants to desolate Victor’s heart, not by killing him directly,

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While he is traveling he sees a girl running playfully away from a guy and she slips and falls into the river. Frankenstein tries to saves her but she is dead, then the young man takes the girl from him and shoots him in the shoulder while he tries to pursue them. “Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind” (Shelley 101). He is in so much pain and loneliness that he hates mankind and plans to have eternal revenge on all mankind and especially Victor his creator. Also the monster shows hatred vengeance towards mankind when he burns down the cottage of De Lacey.

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Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, is one of the most important and popular novels in the Romantic genre to this day. The novel was originally controversial because it touched on many fragile subjects such as the human anatomy and the development of science. The structure of Frankenstein begins as an epistolary, narrative story told by Robert Walton to his sister in England. Walton’s letters tell us that he is exploring, searching for what lies beyond the North Pole, and he eventually connects with Frankenstein. Shelley creates the protagonist, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who has a fascination with life and death.

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The monsters revenge on Frankenstein, drives him too to be full of hatred and need for vengeance because he destroyed everything good in his life. He feels as the death of his loved ones is his fault because he is the one that created the horrid creature in the first place (Brackett). “As time passed away I became more calm; misery had her dwelling in my heart, but I no longer talked in the same incoherent manner of my own crimes; sufficient for me was the consciousness of them” (Shelley 158). The monster wanted Victor to feel the same thing as him, lonely and sadness. The monsters revenge works, Victor becomes rejected by people and has nobody but himself.

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790 Words | 4 Pages

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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929 Words | 4 Pages

Isolation and a lack of companionship is the tragic reality for the monster, who was abandoned by his creator and is repulsive to everyone that he comes across. Victor removes himself from society for many months; severing nearly all human contact then renouncing his creation based on the monster's appearance. As the monster matures he begins to understands the relationship the cottagers share with one another, while the monster, “yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures: to see their sweet looks directed towards me with affection was the utmost limit of my ambition. ”(Shelley). Armed with nothing but the longing for a real connection, the monster approaches his unknowing hosts only to be “brutally attacked—by those he trusted...because of their human ignorance.

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1420 Words | 6 Pages

Discouraged and discontent, the monster gives up his quest to become acknowledged by humans. Finally, arguably the most important confrontation in the entire novel, Victor Frankenstein and his monster meet face to face and explain the causes of each other's suffering. The monster explains that it is simply his mere knowledge of his own existence that causes him great grief, "I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?

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