Frankenstein Lit Analysis Rough Draft Since the beginning of time, Man has always pursued knowledge, but this pursuit is always kept within certain boundaries, especially while searching for the truths behind the creation and origin of life. As this quest for knowledge continues, men can become consumed with the perilous thoughts and ponderings required to attain this wisdom. In her novel, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley explains how the pursuit of forbidden knowledge can become dangerous through symbolism, allusion, and foreshadowing proving each effectively to the reader. Employing symbolism as her first technique, Shelley uses this in the way many other enlightenment authors do. The strongest use of symbolism is prevalent while Victor is contemplating
in stark contrast Victor’s speeches are absurdly melodramatic, with words “expressive of furious detestation and contempt”, reflecting the violence of his feelings. Through the juxtaposition of their language, with Victor’s uncivilised, savaged passions contrasting to the creature’s eloquent, harmonious arrangement of words, Victor’s superiority and intelligence is usurped by his creation. (Through Shelley, we come to a heightened understanding of the significant dangers of humanity’s flawed nature as it provokes a lack of
Frankenstein Passage Analysis Essay P. 63-64 beginning with “While I watched the tempest” and ending with “destroy all that was dear to me.” This passage is filled with many vague detailed imagery. The passage starts out by describing a storm in which Frankenstein describe as beautiful and breathtaking yet described it as terrifying at the same time to show the power of the storm. He describes the lightning and the trees while informing us that his creature is there “behind a clump of trees near me....
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.
(Shelley 50) hence he unknowingly and quickly he is taken from life into darkness. The darkness of the night due to the weather conditions was a way for the author to convey Victor’s sadness and William’s death. The imagery in the quote is ended with the description of a “preceding flash” (Shelley 50) and this is the way the author foreshadows the next outcome of emotion for Victor. Off in the distance Victor sees something large and realizes it was the creature which he brought to life who probably killed his
Shelley shows that Victor’s abandonment of the creature contributes to many feelings the creature goes through. Shelley writes that: “I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing? They spurn and hate me.” (Shelley 103).
Victor states, “My limbs now tremble and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic, impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit… and I shunned my fellow-creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime” (Shelley 40). This shows that Victor was once an innocent youth fascinated by the science of nature and then turned into a disillusioned, guilt-ridden man determined to destroy what he has created. Paul Sherwin demonstrates that, “for Frankenstein, who is dubiously in love with his own polymorphously disastrous history, the fateful event to which every other catastrophe is prelude or postscript is the creation” (Sherwin 883). Victor represses his needs to sleep, eat, and have any contact with his family and friends to follow this one ambition. The monster and Victor have all experienced the affects of self-centeredness.
This foreshadows the detrimental consequences that are to come because of his deformity. Similarly, Victor progressively loses his innocence throughout the novel. Victor deep dives into danger when he explores knowledge as shown in this passage, “Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember” (Shelley 22). The bubbling treachery that is to come buds in this excerpt where Victor recalls the moment he felt the desire to acquire knowledge. As events unfold and damage has been done, in this passage he states, “The cup of life was poisoned forever, and although the sun shone upon me, as upon the happy and gay of heart, I saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness…
But these are not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death, and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world”(24). Victor shows the strong love of family in his childhood “No human being could have passed a happier childhood than [me]. My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence” (Shelley,40), he raised with excellent conditions and with parents who loved their children, but we do not see that Victor gives this love to his creature and ignored him, notwithstanding the fact that the two figures shared many characteristics. As a result of Frankenstein 's darkness and ignorance toward his creature, he refused to accept the monster because of his physical appearance and Frankenstein sees the creature as if he were the monster when the creature
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
Victor falls ill with anxiety, and as a result of Victor’s neglect the monster begins to destroy his life. Even when the monster confronts Frankenstein, threatening that he “will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of [Frankenstein’s] remaining friends, 102" Victor does not acknowledge the problem he has caused, the literal embodiment of his anxiety. He does not attempt to confront the monster head on or alleviate his loneliness, both a form of acknowledgement and thus a healthy way to respond to his fears. Instead, he once again pretends the monster doesn’t exist which only further enrages and empowers him. Once again, this mirrors the fact that when fears and anxiety go undealt with they will only grow and confirms that the monster is the embodiment of this
Upon approaching Victor, desperate for a female, the creature is shut down by Victor. Shelley elaborates on his fear for the future of mankind by provoking ignorance in Victor’s response. The creature explains to Victor that even though he abandoned his duties to nurture him, Victor still holds a moral responsibility to provide the creature with essential needs including happiness. Victor contemplates whether his loyalty swings more towards the safety of mankind or the happiness of his creation, as for him to “create another like yourself, whose joints wickedness might desolate the world”, imposes a huge fear for complying to the creature’s ask (Shelley 156). The creature promises that no harm will come to humanity as they will isolate themselves, but Victor is still hesitant for he does not know what the readers know.
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,
Victor Frankenstein has since destroyed his female creation of the Monster due to his fear that she and the Monster would procreate, lost the life of Elizabeth who he had just married hours before she was murdered, and threw his life away to pursue the Monster in a chase that led him to the North seeking for revenge against all that the Monster has cost him. Victor, alone and near death, is then discovered wandering through the snow and ice by a passing ship somewhere in the Arctic. The crew rescues Victor and brings him aboard the ship where he meets captain Walden. It is upon this ship and in the presence of Walden that Victor says his very last words. After Victor’s death, a mysterious figure takes form from the darkness of the room in which Victor’s corpse inhabits and out slinks the Monster.
Simultaneously, Victor failing to take responsibility for his own creation leads the creature down a path of destruction that manufactures his status as a societal outcast. The creature's dissolution from society, his search for someone to share his life with, the familiarity with intense anguish, his thirst for retribution, each of these traits coincide with Victor as he is depicted throughout the novel. Victor unknowingly induces his own undoing through his rejection of the creature. Shelley foreshadows his downfall by stating that “the monster still protested his innate goodness, blaming Victor’s rejection and man’s unkindness as the source of his evil” (Shelley 62) The creature essentially places Victor at fault for the creature becoming an outcast of society, by expressing this Shelley constructs a very austere portrayal of man’s contact with outsiders.
