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Examples Of Make Way For The New Oedipus

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Make Way for the New Oedipus: Victor Frankenstein!
How could Victor Frankenstein, protagonist of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, know that imbuing life to inanimate matter would bring so much sorrow? After creating a creature from corpses and animating it, Frankenstein’s life spirals downhill. The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a tragedy in of Ancient Greek style. This essay will prove this thesis by showing how the plot structure matches the Ancient Greek tragedies, describing Frankenstein’s peripeteia, and by defining Frankenstein as a tragic hero.
Frankenstein exhibits the Greek tragedy plot structure with an inciting incident, multiple peripeteia, a climax, a catastrophe, and a resolution. The following quotation describes Frankenstein’s …show more content…

Here, Victor incredulously ponders his mother’s death, sparking his idea to reanimate life. The climax occurs when the newly married Victor expects the creature to kill him, in Volume III, Chapter VI: “But I discovered no trace of him, and was beginning to conjecture that some fortunate chance had intervened to prevent the execution of his menaces when suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful scream. It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired” (Shelley 187). In a cruel twist of fate, the creature kills Victor’s wife Elizabeth instead of Victor. The grief Victor feels, along with his guilt of the deaths of all his other friends and family comes crashing down upon him in the catastrophe a few lines later: “This reflection brought tears to my eyes, and I wept, for a long time; but my thoughts rambled to various subjects, reflecting on my misfortunes, and their cause” (Shelley 189). The deaths of Victor’s brother William, his friends …show more content…

The first change of Victor’s fortune comes after Victor animates the creature, in a letter from his father: “William is dead! ‒that sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed my heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay! Victor, he is murdered!” (Shelley 62). Victor soon realizes that the creature was the murderer. Victor knew that, as he brought the creature into being, he was responsible for this and its following crimes. The second peripeteia appears when Victor meets the creature once again, and the creature related his story, requesting something only Victor could accomplish: “I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects. This being you must create” (Shelley 137). Victor agrees to create a wife for the creature, provided that the creature leaves humanity forever, but he soon makes a decision which changes his fate. The third peripeteia occurs in Volume III, Chapter III: “I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and, trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged” (Shelley 160). Victor realizes that the woman creature might not agree to what the creature agreed to, or that the two creatures could bring

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960 Words | 4 Pages

After the creature is finished explaining its story to Victor, there is a turning point in the novel. Victor realizes that he needs to take on some responsibility for his creation: “did I not as his maker, owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow?”(Shelley 148). Victor also thinks, “…the justice due both to him and my fellow creatures demanded of me that I should comply with his request. ”(Shelley 150). Victor is finally understanding that he needs to take on some responsibility for this creature.

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1042 Words | 5 Pages

While Victor is in Ireland, attempting to create a female companion for the creature , he gives up on his efforts, which ends up angering the creature and leading to the death of his beloved friend Henry Clerval. Victor basically wants nothing to do with the creature and this makes the creature furious, because when looked upon from a religious point of view, the creator is obliged to take care of the being created. This is significant, because if Victor had just followed the creatures wants for a female companion, or not even create him in the first place ,his friend Henry would still be alive, and the ordeals of death wouldn’t keep following Victor. Tragically for Victor ,the creature vows to be there at his wedding day to take the life of his loving Elizabeth. The creature’s persistence to take away everything Victor loves and everything he couldn’t have himself, is what drives the monster to make Victor’s life a living hell.

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1244 Words | 5 Pages

After all of the terror his ambition causes the life of Victor begins to reach the end. On his death bed Victor begins to reflect on his entire life and remarks that “In a fit of enthusiastic madness [he] created a rational creature, and was bound towards him, to assure, as far as was in [his] power, his happiness and well-being” (165). The reason that the ambition of Victor is so dangerous is because he chose the most unethical path to gain glory and fame. Victor in essence is an incredibly cruel “father” who abandoned his child as soon as it was born and allows it to go out into the cold hard world with absolutely no

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1281 Words | 6 Pages

(Shelley 56). This is the reason that Victor did not realize he had gone too far until it was too late. Once victor brings the creature to life, he immediately realizes the hideousness of what he has done: “Now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” (Shelley 56). Furthermore, Victor struggles to cope with his creation throughout the novel.

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778 Words | 4 Pages

Frankenstein, a classic novel written by Mary Shelley, is also known as The Modern Prometheus. It may be assumed that this “modern Prometheus” is Frankenstein’s monster, on the contrary Mr. Victor Frankenstein himself mirrors the life of the mythological titan in various ways. Both seeking enlightenment and power, they create something incredible, and yet conflicting; furthermore they also experience what seems like unending torture. This novel demonstrates the ways in which the stories of both Frankenstein and Prometheus share similarities. The definition of “enlighten” is to give knowledge or understanding, or to explain something to someone (Merriam Webster).

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563 Words | 3 Pages

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a classic novel that explores the consequences of cruelty, both towards oneself and others. Through the course of the story, the theme of cruelty functions as a crucial motivator and major social and political factor, driving the plot and the development of the characters. This essay will analyze how cruelty functions in the work as a whole, the impact it has on the characters, and what it reveals about the perpetrator/victim relationship. One of the most striking examples of cruelty in the novel is the treatment of the creature by his creator, Victor Frankenstein.

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755 Words | 4 Pages

Mary Shelley, the author of the novel Frankenstein, attended a ghost story party, hosted by Lord Baron. She won the competition for her tale about an unnatural creature trying to live amongst humans. The main protagonist of the story, Frankenstein, is viewed as a monster and is rejected by society. Frankenstein the film directed by David Wickes, inspired by the novel, demonstrates that people are negatively affected based on society’s rejection. Frankenstein is an unfinished creature who is mistreated.

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670 Words | 3 Pages

Victor sharing the story through his very emotional perspective, causes critical information to be skewed or misinterpreted. When Elizabeth is murdered by the creature, Victor describes the event very theatrically. He recalled crying over Elizabeth, looking up at a dark, “hideous” and “abhorred figure, with a grin on the creature's face, pointing at Elizabeth(149-150). With the assumption that the creature was going to kill Victor, he could not believe the creature would go in this direction. Along with this very

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992 Words | 4 Pages

In the beginning, Victor reveals his timidity towards occurring disasters. When the creature comes to life, Victor realizes that it is grotesque and describes, “I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep” (42). Upon realizing the unfortunate turnout of the creation, Victor avoids confronting his fault by hurrying off and hiding in his bedroom. Accordingly, Victor is unable to control his creation. When the creature leaves after threatening Victor about a tragedy on his wedding night, Victor asks himself, “Why had I not followed him and closed with him in mortal strife?”

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782 Words | 4 Pages

In the novel Frankenstein,by Mary Shelley, the mysterious and unnatural origins of the character of Frankenstein’s monster are an important element. The Monster, having been created unethically and haphazardly, is at odds throughout the novel, resulting in his alienation from society and prolonged feelings of anger, desertion, and loneliness. Shaping his character, his relationships with other characters, and the meaning of the work as a whole, the Monster’s origins are what define him. The Monster faces rejection and violence every time he attempts to make contact with the new, foreign world he has been thrust into.

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1921 Words | 8 Pages

The fictional horror novel of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is driven by the accentuation of humanity’s flaws. Even at the very mention of her work an archetypal monster fills one’s imagination, coupled with visions of a crazed scientist to boot. Opening her novel with Robert Walton, the conduit of the story, he also serves as a character to parallel the protagonist’s in many ways. As the ‘protagonist’ of the story, Victor Frankenstein, takes on the mantle of the deluded scientist, his nameless creation becomes the embodiment of a truly abandoned child – one left to fend for itself against the harsh reality posed by society. On the other hand, Walton also serves as a foil to Victor – he is not compulsive enough to risk what would be almost

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783 Words | 4 Pages

“Whenever the creation order is inverted, there is disorder, destruction, and death. When we tamper with this order, even a little, we become life-takers rather than life-givers”(J. Ligon Duncan III ). This quote plays a large part in the overall literature that is Frankenstein; it pulls together the attributes of the story in a way I haven’t seen before. This essay will be focusing on the relationship between the gothic novel of Frankenstein, and the greek myth of Prometheus. It will be a compare and contrast of the dueling stories.

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656 Words | 3 Pages

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a gothic novel that tells the story of scientist, Victor Frankenstein, and his obsession with creating human life. This leads him to creating a gruesome monster made of body-parts stolen from grave yards, whom upon discovering his hideousness, the monster seeks revenge against his creator, causing Victor to regret the creation of his monster for the rest of his life. Shelley uses the literary elements of personification, imagery, and similes to give a vivid sense and visualization of Victor Frankenstein’s thoughts and feelings as well as to allow us to delve deeper into the monster’s actions and emotions. Throughout the novel, Shelley uses personification of various forces and objects to reflect the effect in Victor’s actions.

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723 Words | 3 Pages

Marry Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ or ‘The Modern Prometheus’, largely resembles the Greek myth, where the subject makes severe mistakes, attempting to play god, as he disregards the ethics of humanity, as well as his own moral. Victor Frankenstein, who is the ‘Modern Prometheus’ in Mary Shelley’s novel, attempt to do the impossible – create life! While the Greek Prometheus (a titan), commits three sins against Zeus, one of them being the giving of fire to humans. Both are in their own way absurd, however in both cases, they succeed. However both are subjected to either pain or suffering, whether it is physical or mental, after realizing what they have done.

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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein depicts the remarkable resemblance to the “modern” myth of Prometheus. The intertextuality used to connect these two stories, allow Shelley to bring out the most prominent themes of Power and suffering. As both of the characters deal differently with the struggle to resist the power that comes with creating life, the inevitable end for both characters are the same; they fall at the hands of their own creations. Shelley carefully utilizes the legend of Prometheus to express the connection between punishment and creation.

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