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Frankenstein Theme Essay

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My Take on the Themes of Frankenstein The author, Mary Shelley, was the daughter of radicals Mary Wollenscraft and William Goodwin. Mary never knew her mother because of her mother’s death four weeks after she was born. She grew up educating herself amongst her father’s circle of fellow writers. While educating herself she met her husband, fellow writer Percy Bysshe Shelley. In 1816 Mary and her husband went too Geneva, and met Lord Byron, the man whose ghost story challenge started the idea for the novel, Frankenstein. Frankenstein started as a ghost story of only a few pages, in 1818 and then died in 1851. While in Geneva Percy and Lord Byron became fascinated with electric shock, Percy had his professor demonstrate how electric shock works. …show more content…

This need to know more about the world lead him to leave his home, and travel to Ingolstadt for school. Early on his interest was in Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus, great scholars of old science. One of Victor’s professors saw what he had been studying and told him he would have to start his studies entirely new. He also became very interested in chemistry, the subject that would ultimately help create a monster. “One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted his attention was the structure of the human frame. Victors thirst for the forbidden sent his project into action. He began to exhume corpses from the church yard, using them to view and record the progress of decaying flesh. While examining the bodies he kept body parts from different cadavers to build his own creature. According to Alan Raunch, Victors reasoning for making a male monster is because, the female body is troublesome to him due to the fact that woman can reproduce. “You seek the knowledge and wisdom as I once did; and I ardently hope the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.” (Shelley62) Victor knows from the beginning that his studies required devious acts, but his wants clouded his moral judgement. This could also be viewed as a time where Victor is not comfortable with himself and how he is as a human

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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

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Victor Frankenstein wants this knowledge that he goes to college to study every aspect in the field. This eventually gives him the idea to create a creature who happens to obtain the same traits and flukes that Victor has in his life. “Days and nights of incredible labor and fatigue.” (4.37) Victor shows that he put a lot of energy into making his new creation. He wanted it to be perfect and spent all the time he can to make his creation unique. Once the creature was created Victor thinks to himself that he has created something no one has ever done before.

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Choose a complex and important character in a novel or a play of recognized literary merit who might on the basis of the character’s actions alone be considered evil or immoral. In a well-organized essay, explain both how and why the full presentation of the character in the work makes us react more sympathetically than we otherwise might. Avoid plot summary. I. Introduction: A. In Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein, the reader is tasked with answering the central question of who is the truest evil.

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Victor first begins creating the monster, working tirelessly for selfish reasons. His body suffers tremendously and he drags himself along treating his body like a slave. He states: “My cheeks have grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement.” (Shelly 33)

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I believe her overall message in writing Frankenstein is that selfishness, such as Victor’s when he is creating the monster, only leads to alienation and loss down the road. Victor experienced this loss, and eventually became just like the monster at the end of the

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Dangerous Minds- Rough Draft Knowledge has the capability to be used for both good and evil. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, there is a consistent message throughout the novel showing the dangerous and destructive power that knowledge can have. Two key characters, Victor Frankenstein and his monster, are shaped through their obsessions with knowledge and the power and responsibility that it brings. Ultimately, Victor’s downfall is a result of his uncontrollable thirst for knowledge, and is brought about through the monster which is the embodiment of his obsession. Victor is a brilliant scientist who figures out a way to create life from death using galvanism, or electricity.

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Thematic Statement: The underlying purpose of creation can go awry, even though it was meant for the greater good. Explanation: In the gothic novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the character Victor develops the monster in an effort to become famous in the scientific field and remembered for his contributions to science. However, he never takes into account the vast consequences that life's creation entails.

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To get the body parts for his 8-foot-tall monster, he needed to go grave digging to retrieve the body parts: "Darkness had no effect upon my fancy; and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm" (52). Victor's overly ambitious mindset causes him to be blind to the concept of 'morals' and 'doing the right thing.' If Victor were to create a female monster, just as hideous as requested by the beast, he would likely have to commit the same unrightful deeds he executed for the original Creature. Subsequently, after performing these actions, paranoia and trauma stormed Victor's mind; they were the only thing he could think about. He was regretful and shameful, and these emotions would likely plague Victor's mind once again if he followed through with the female

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However, Victors reckless and unthoughtful actions pushes the monster into a state of rage and hatred that overrides his ability to stop from exacting revenge on Victor. Victor initially creates the monster thinking that it will be an amazing creature, built from the best human body parts Victor could procure. After he views the outcome of his work he is repulsed by it and abandons it, hoping that it would cease to exist. Not only did the monster survive, but it learned to speak, write, and read. After reading the book Paradise Lost, the monster thinks of its own situation and states the following:

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He despised the monster he believed he is; he stated that “when [he] heard the details of vice and bloodshed, [his] wonder ceased, and [he] turned away with disgust and loathing” (104). Therefore, he realized his flaws, which Victor failed to

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Frankenstein is a book written by Mary Shelley about a man named Victor Frankenstein and his life and how it came to be. He had created a monster and brought it to life by studying and learning natural philosophy. Mary Shelley brought the emotions forward from the main characters by the amount of detail she put into the book. Most of the detail was brought in by the suffering that happens throughout the book caused by Frankenstein’s monster. The monster in this story is a tragic figure that is the main cause of suffering that occurs to everyone.

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Victor is stirred by his work, but not in a positive manner. He goes on to explain his feelings towards the creature by saying, “… my heart sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred” (136). Victor is so bewildered and repulsed by the creature that he misses key signs of violence, from the creature, that may have saved Victor’s family had he not been so

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Throughout the book the death of Victor's family has taken a toll on his mental state and he starts showing signs of mental illness. Much like Mary Shelley had mental illness because of the horrors that happened in her life. The illnesses that Victor starts showing signs of depression, paranoid schizophrenia, and anxiety. Depression is something that

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He worked very hard, as he states, to conclude his project into a living being. And once he finished and gave life to the creature, the responsibility of it was his. If Victor detested his decision of making the being once he contemplated and observed it, it wasn’t reason enough to ignore the fact that he was the reason of that monster to exist. He accepted his occurrence, he says that once it got up and was able to walk towards him, “I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce approach of the demoniacal corpse have conceived” (Shelley 21), but he didn’t realize before leaving the monster alone, what was it capable of, or if it was dangerous. Even he says, “Oh!

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Frankenstein created the creature so he could manipulate the power of life, not to learn from the experience. He is so immersed in his studies, fascinated by the creation of life. He studies what the human body is made up of and how it falls apart. Victor completely disengages from the world when away at school after his mother dies of scarlet fever.

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