Examples Of Situational Irony In Frankenstein

You’d never expect your own creation to destroy you, not even under the most hostile situation. Not very often do you hear a son destroy its father’s life to create a better life for itself, so why would a scientist create a monster that would only destroy everything it loves? What if the scientist was unaware of the harmful consequences of its creation? The expectations we have as humans are never contradicted, Mary Shelley manipulates the expectation of the novel to engage the reader in a cautionary tale through different forms of irony and allegory. Mary Shelley Frankenstein illustrates direct, situational and verbal irony throughout the novel to play against readers expectations.

In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley introduces irony early when

In Victors early life, he showed a trait of “evil” he was taught growing up to be successful. Victor states " I was to be taught to associate evil with their prosecution." (Shelley 37). Victor claims he must associate evil with his research and studying and happiness when not studying. This shows situational irony later throughout the novel when victor is in the process of bringing dead corpse to life. Stated in “A Tradition of Male Poetics: Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” as an Allegory of Art” by A. James Wohlpart, he explains what evil thoughts that run through Victors mind while in school, As Victor visited the lecture of M. Waldman on modern science, he had portrayed his “dark” side that he had developed at a young age. As he was listening to the seminar, he thought to himself “analyzing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me...” (Shelley 51-51). The way Victor words the light that had broken upon him shows a sense of evil creativity that should not be missed by the reader, ironically this evil thought conducted the idea of creating a monster that had soon destroyed his

The monster confronts Victor months later after his creation. The monster exclaims " I ought to be thy Adam; but rather the fallen angel."(Shelley 89). The monster feels that he is a creation of a new era, he feels that he is the Adam, and he is asking Victor, also known as his god/creator, for his “eve”, which is known to be his mate. He believes he was created for good but ironically, he has created so much destruction that he is better represented as thy fallen angel. The monster shows irony by becoming something completely opposite of an angel and not knowing