Oppressive Dynamics In 1994 in the African country of Rwanda, civil war broke loose. There are two major ethnic groups living there, the Hutus and the Tutsis. The Tutsis oppressed the Hutu for many years in the 1960s and believed they were better than them; they made them feel like outcasts in society by taunting them and excluding them from all societal activities. The Hutus eventually rose up through violence and began attacking, attempting to kill every single Tutsi, despite if they had actually done the oppressing themselves. Just like Rwanda, where an oppressed lower class breaks through to fight for equality, so does a monster in Mary Shelley’s first novel. In the story, Victor Frankenstein, a wealthy man obsessed with alchemy and creating a new form life, reanimates a hodgepodge corpse. He immediately feels afraid of his creation and guilty for making it, so he decides to abandon this monster to fend for himself. This and other events send the monster in a downward spiral of self hatred and pity, so he decides to take out his sorrow on his creator by killing all of Victor’s loved ones for causing the monster’s years of grief. If one were to look at this story through a Marxist lens, a comparison can be drawn to the Bourgeoisie and proletariat classes, and how their oppressive dynamic leads to eventual revolution and violence. Therefore, …show more content…
Not only does he have no family, but everyone is afraid to approach him and he lacks the same opportunities as everyone else. He reflects on his social status when he thinks “I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man” (85). The monster’s thoughts reveal that he is aware of his low class status, and it brings him confusion about his identity along with sorrow. Thus proving that he is part of the proletariat or low class because he is unable to enjoy his life due to his place on the social