Examples Of Irony In Frankenstein

This last letter from Walton to his sister describes his final encounters with Victor Frankenstein and the Creature itself. Within these two letters, the author, Mary Shelley, includes irony between two passages to close out the novel. Passage one is a conversation between Walton and Victor while passage two is between Walton and the Creature. Each passage contains irony within themselves along with irony against each other that connect to the overall story. The first chosen passage discusses how Victor feels he has changed for the worse from his younger self. Ever since he created the Creature his life has held a multitude of misfortunes. All of these incidents were at the hand of the Creature he made, thus being ironic in a sense. Victor’s

The Creature appears when Victor is found dead in his chambers. Immediately the Creature sobs at the sight of his dead creator. He is deeply saddened by the death of Victor however, he is enraged by the thought that it was his fault. The Creature expresses to Walton his feelings of remorse towards all his previous murders as well as Victor’s death. He also speaks on his feelings of abandonment and exile from all humans throughout his life. The irony is in the fact that the Creature once only thought of a dream to have normal relationships with humans but, now his thoughts of murder and revenge. He cannot believe that the creature he is today is the same as “the creature whose thoughts were filled with sublime and transcendent visions of beauty” (Shelly 97). One day, he thought, he would be amongst other people but because of his crimes he is alone. His thoughts are ironic because he was the cause of his dream of being normal never to happen. It is ironic that he went from being a kindhearted innocent creature to a dangerous

Victor and the Creature’s irony throughout their life is found to be self caused. Each character drastically changed their own life under the choices they decided to make. Victor Frankenstein caused his own irony by wanted to create something beautiful however, making a monster. The Creature’s irony is having a goal to walk peacefully with humans but only to change to the desire to murder. The situational irony in both characters are self inflicted and contributes to an overall theme to the novel. The theme to be found with the help of this irony is one’s fate in life. A person’s fate can be determined early on by the cause and effect of their chosen actions. Victor chose to test life by creating a living creature. The effect to this action was that he made a monster who decides Victor’s fate for the rest of his life. Now, the Creature chose to murder Victor’s various family members out of revenge against his creator. The effect of this is his own fate of ruining the biggest dream he hoped for, to live a normal life. He ruined that because he truly became the monster he was perceived to