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Family In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Family plays an instrumental role in the growth of a person. It is what helps shape a person. In Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley we can see just how instrumental family is as family is an important theme in this story. Victor Frankenstein came from a very loving and caring family. Throughout his childhood, he had all the love a child could ask for and his parents supported him. Frankenstein says, “No youth could have passed more happily than mine” (Shelly 31). Frankenstein knows that he has a caring family; however, due to his ambitions, he alienates himself from his family. In his search for knowledge of what constitutes as the “principle of life”, he becomes so consumed with this search that his family takes a back seat. He goes two years without visiting his family due to this endeavor. When Frankenstein discovers the secret of creating life he tells no one and proceeds to create life. When his creature awakes and reaches towards Frankenstein, he runs away from the creature and abandons him, which is in contrast to how Frankenstein grew up. Frankenstein runs back to his family and doesn’t even tell his family …show more content…

By observing the family, the creature wonders why his creator was never like this with him. By listening to the family, he learns to speak and even though he hadn’t met them, he considered them to be his friends. When he finally works up the courage and speaks to the father and the others walk in, he is once again alienated. They look at him in horror and that night they leave the cottage in fear that the creature will return. The creature longed to become a part of human society, he longed to be a part of a family. He considered the family to be his proctors and they left him and “had broken the only link that held me to the world” (Shelly 164). This has led the creature to commit evil

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