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Examples Of Innocence In Frankenstein

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In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the main character Victor tells a story that is supposed to teach his listener, Robert, about the consequences of knowledge. Though it is clear that Victor’s story is rooted in this key lesson, it is unclear exactly why Victor chooses to share this specific thesis with Robert. Through further examination of Victor’s fears, his reasoning becomes more evident. Victor is afraid of killing Elizabeth, who to him represents innocence. Though he seems to be afraid of physically killing the innocent, in reality, this fear is a manifestation of his greater fear of corrupting the innocent through knowledge. Victor’s fear of his own ability to corrupt the innocent pushes him to explain the problems with knowledge to Robert. …show more content…

Additionally, the word “appeared” is very subjective, and therefore demonstrates that Elizabeth seems innocent specifically to Victor. This idea of Elizabeth’s innocence continues throughout the passage, as Victor says that he “loved to tend on her.” By saying this, Victor demotes Elizabeth to a level beneath him, and conjures the imagery of a child who needs to be taken care of. This further indicates that Elizabeth represents innocence to …show more content…

According to OED, “imprint” means “to mark by pressure” or “to stamp.” Therefore, it is clear that by kissing Elizabeth, Victor is leaving a mark on her, and therefore is physically changing her. Victor then goes on to describe this change, saying that Elizabeth transformed into the corpse of his mother, and that “grave-worms” were crawling around her. This graphic imagery of death clearly indicates what has truly happened in the dream -- Victor has taken something previously healthy and has killed it simply by marking it. This frightens Victor quite a bit, causing him to wake up with “horror.” Knowing that to Victor Elizabeth symbolizes the innocent, it is clear that what Victor is really seeing in this dream is his ability to kill the innocent, and this scares him

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248 Words | 1 Pages

Victor Frankenstein starts off as an innocent man who is trying to prevent death. Quote about death of mother. Victor wants to create a way to prevent death so that he does not have to feel that pain again. Ironically, his innocent experiment causes him to feel that pain many more times. Although Victor’s intentions are pure, the outcome of his experiment is detrimental.

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186 Words | 1 Pages

He thinks that he is worthy enough to know all the different secrets in life. This is solely because of his pride. Another example of Victor showing pride is when he creates his monster. Victor states “...” (Shelley ).

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960 Words | 4 Pages

Victor spends two years toiling away at discovering the “elixir of life”, and when he is finally able to bring the creature back to life, Victor simply lets the creature leave. During the moment when the creature is conceived, a foreshadowing clue is given: “her[Elizabeth’s] features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form…”(Shelley 59). This quote is clearly foreshadowing Elizabeth’s demise. Mary Shelley’s placement of this quote in the middle of the moment when Victor is leaving the creature that he just created is purposeful. It is supposed to send the message that Victor’s actions here are rash and will cause great catastrophe later on.

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687 Words | 3 Pages

The novel Frankenstein brings to light many problems and situations that shed light on the faults of mankind. Cruelty was a huge factor in the novel; throughout Frankenstein is cruel to his body and to his creation. When he first makes the creature he runs from it, leaving the creature to fend for himself; even when reuniting with the creature he continues displays cruelty. The creature, in turn exhibits Victor cruelty right back. Within Frankenstein cruelty can be attributed, often affecting both Victor and the creature; serving as a crucial motivator and revealing their anger, pain, frustration till eventually both die.

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689 Words | 3 Pages

This ties in with how Victor should not have sacrificed his humanity in the pursuit of knowledge. Knowing too much is not always a good thing to which in the end messed with God’s plans. Elizabeth was Victor’s cousin, but also soon to be wife. On the wedding night of Elizabeth and Victor, Elizabeth dies when the monster decides to act upon getting revenge on Victor. This only caused Victor to break down even more.

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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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1297 Words | 6 Pages

When Victor rejected The Creatures want for a girl companion he replied, “I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your wedding night.” When this was said, Victor knew of the possible danger that Elizabeth was now in but refused to warn her of this danger and this lead to her death. The penalties that Victor faced due to keeping the existence of this creature a secret it what lead to the deaths of the people that he cared for, and the fact that he had the ability to save these lives but chose to not even try says a lot about

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1370 Words | 6 Pages

Victor does not handle his monster, or his fears, well. When Frankenstein first sees his monster, he immediately “escaped, [from the room the monster was in] and rushed down stairs. p50” As the monster is an externalization of Frankenstein’s fears, this escape, this inability to so much as look at the monster, can be interpreted as Frankenstein’s inability to acknowledge his fears and anxieties. Like with anxiety, denying the monster’s existence only causes him to grow more destructive.

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1090 Words | 5 Pages

To make Victor experience the feeling isolation, the creature sets out to destroy what he hold most dear, Elizabeth. Victor describes his spouse as the “body of Elizabeth, my love, my wife, so lately living, so dear, so worthy.” Nowhere else in the novel does Victor come even close to describing another human in this manner. Once the monster escaped, Victor realized how important it was to be near people he loved, he had learned the terrors of isolation. The creature then uses this against him by killing the person who brought Victor out of isolation, pushing him back into an even deeper sense of isolation from which Victor

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1134 Words | 5 Pages

He failed his parental duty to take care of his child and his needs and as a result he got Elizabeth killed. Finally, Victor learns that he has been in the wrong the entire time so he pledges to end his creation even if its the death of him. “I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer me” (237).

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992 Words | 4 Pages

Victor realizes that he has lost control of the monster’s actions and regrets not taking the proper precautions in seizing the monster when he has the opportunity. Ultimately, Victor is victimized. After the murder of Elizabeth, Victor reflects on the deaths of his loved ones and says, “The death of William, the execution of Justine, the murder of Clerval, and lastly of my wife; even at that moment I knew not that my only remaining friends were safe from the malignity of the fiend” (174). Victor suffers watching his loved ones die one by one, yet lacking the ability to save them. Overall, Victor’s victimization is due to his timorousness dealing with his initial

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389 Words | 2 Pages

The idea of knowledge in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley interprets knowledge as an evil pursuit. The knowlege is misused, due to Victor, the monster, and the interference with nature. Theses reasons are different perspectives that lead to tragedies. The novel Frankenstein identifies Victor's desire to gain knowledge as misusing it.

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790 Words | 4 Pages

In this, Victor brought up things that no mortal should know about, such as: cloning, stem cell research, and IVFs. Examples of these were shown when the author states, “It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn… my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical… the physical secrets of the world” (43). Victor is knowingly tampering with knowledge that is essentially too great for man. He is also essentially trying to be like God, which is the original sin, and as a result, he is put in eternal despair.

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879 Words | 4 Pages

Because of this, Elizabeth had to play all feminine roles towards Victor: mother figure, sister, and wife. While Elizabeth becomes like a mother, Victor had already formed a friendly bond with her. Victor describes Elizabeth as “gentile and affectionate” (20), motherly characteristics, but Victor would never be able to see Elizabeth as a mother. Elizabeth and Victor had grown up together since the age of four. She was the only one who could make him forget his troubles, and he was the only one who could console her after the death of William and Justine.

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711 Words | 3 Pages

An important murder occurred that would affect Victor even greater than the death of his little brother, William. The death of his bride, Elizabeth, made Victor make decisions that would even put his own life in danger. Before the death of Elizabeth, Victor had been very nervous leading up to the wedding and even told Elizabeth that he had an important secret to tell her after their wedding. She eventually would find out what that secret would be when the monster would sneak into her room in the cottage and murder her. At that point, Victor had been looking for the monster, and instead of the monster coming for him, he went for Elizabeth.

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