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Gaining Knowledge And Isolation In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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In Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, Shelley conveys the pursuit of gaining knowledge and isolation and how it affects someone mentally by using similes, diction, contrast, and hyperbole. In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein is telling Walton how gaining knowledge has turned him into a different person. Walton is making a comment of what he knows of Victor's story and how he thinks Victor was like in his prosperity of knowledge. “He is thus noble and godlike in ruin!” Walton is stating that Victor was gaining knowledge and achieved what his plan was. The use of the simile, “godlike” illustrates Victor being and feeling extremely powerful that he felt that no one can ruin him and his power like a god. But, this all had to end at a certain part of time. When Victor’s downfall did come, when the monster took over Victor’s life, Victor was still noble and godlike. Victor knew his own worth and knew how great his downfall was. “Like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.” In this quote there is a simile, diction, and hyperbole. In this sentence, it is stating that Victor did what the archangel did to …show more content…

Victor's isolation from other people and nature has made him think of himself and other things of importance to him. “I have longed for a friend. Behold, on these desert seas I have found such a one.” Victor was and isolated himself from humans. This has made him think over what was the cause and effects of his decisions. The contrast, “desert seas”, portrays where and what he has seeked for a friend. Victor has isolated himself that he knows that he wasn’t looking for a friend but he needed one. He has found Walton in the middle of a extremely cold place that is isolated from humans. Isolation has made Victor tell his story to someone who is going the same pathways as he was in his younger years and to make him think what could possibly happen if he carries on this

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Knowledge can be Blessings and Curse A teenage girl Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein in the 18th century. A Gothic novel Frankenstein deals with two genres, Gothicism and science fiction. Victor, one of Mary Shelly’s characters represents man’s pursuit of knowledge which ultimately leads towards the path of destruction while another character Robert Walton implemented his knowledge wisely to get benefits for the society. Mary is indicating to the society that mankind has to pay full attention to science and scientific innovations in order to avoid the catastrophic events due to misuse of knowledge.

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Victor has had supportive people around him since birth; however now that he is at the university he has nobody to help keep him level headed. "Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime" (35). The isolation being portrayed by Victor is now shifting from not only

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His family and home is everything to him, especially his love for Elizabeth. However, as the story progresses and Victor begins to realize the magnitude of his mistake in creating the monster, his outlook on life changes drastically and shifts to a darker tone. During his trek through the wilderness in search of himself, Victor finds peace and comfort in the bleak and powerful mountains. Specifically “...while rain poured from the dark sky and added to the melancholy impression I received from the objects around me… My heart, which was before sorrowful, now soared with something like joy” (Shelley 67).

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But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him” (Shelley 116). This shows how abandoned the monster feels, and how he could leverage that along with other things he learns against Victor and the other humans. Victor’s suffering is entirely self-inflicted.

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Further, this loss of family and friends causes Victor to lose his attachment to the world. Secrecy ultimately brings about his inability to save himself. In this paragraph I will show

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After Victor witnesses the blasted tree, representing the motif of lightning or fire, he believes it is in his civil duty to bring death to life. He creates a monster using the body parts of previous living humans. However, Victor was not there for the creature to learn from and therefore the creature is forced to believe that his physical attributes were a purposeful act of evil, based on the books he procured. He reads the books as though they are all true histories of the world. In his mind the biblical story of Milton’s defines his own life.

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In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the tale of a mad scientist is told who surpasses the limits of science and what is typically considered to be possible for man to achieve. One of the many underlying stories, though, can be seen in the monster who is created and then brought to life at the beginning of the novel. The monster’s development throughout the novel begins with initially being rejected and neglected by his creator Victor Frankenstein. The monster turns aggressive soon after and seeks revenge on Frankenstein’s family, killing off each one, one at a time. These actions are obviously very unlike that of an average human child, but when you look at his horrendous acts as being in response to negligence by a parental figure,

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To make Victor experience the feeling isolation, the creature sets out to destroy what he hold most dear, Elizabeth. Victor describes his spouse as the “body of Elizabeth, my love, my wife, so lately living, so dear, so worthy.” Nowhere else in the novel does Victor come even close to describing another human in this manner. Once the monster escaped, Victor realized how important it was to be near people he loved, he had learned the terrors of isolation. The creature then uses this against him by killing the person who brought Victor out of isolation, pushing him back into an even deeper sense of isolation from which Victor

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The ambition for knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially if that knowledge is kept a secret. The novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, follows Walton who, while searching for new land, helps Victor Frankenstein and listens to his story. Victor Frankenstein is a wise character, but his passion for knowledge, his ambition, and his decision to keep his past a secret drives him and others around him to a short life. Frankenstein’s passion for knowledge drives him to isolate himself and make those around him worry. Frankenstein has a lonely life due to his pursuit of knowledge.

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He is saying that he left everything for his relentless search of knowledge and forgetting about his physical. I think that his suffering is do to the doubts that he had about life. When Victor gave life to the monster, he couldn’t believe the appearance of the monster that he just run away. This was another problem that caused his suffering because of his absences on taking care of the creature. Because of his lack of human appearance, society making something bad awake inside him rejects the monster.

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When Victor abandons him, the Creature attempts to live alone and learn how others live. The people hindered his attempts with their harsh reactions and obvious fear of the Creature. He secluded himself from society and lived in the woods near a little cottage where a family lived. For a while, he stole wood and food from them until he learned their financial hardships and then he started helping them. He observed the family and began learning through them.

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This attitude is clearly naive. Walton possesses the same eagerness that destroyed victor and the monster. Victor says to Walton,

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This quote makes it apparent that Victor regrets his decision to heavily pursue knowledge and create his monster, clearly showing that the path that he embarked on was one that resulted in severe suffering. In conclusion, it is clear that Victor Frankenstein’s intentions are pure, however he is unaware that his pursuit of knowledge directly leads to his personal suffering. Robert Walton, similar to many explorers during his time, is ambitious to discover land beyond the North Pole. However, to reach this goal, he has to walk the dangerous path of acquiring knowledge. Walton’s goal, which is to reach the North Pole, requires him to captain a ship which travels through thick and thin.

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In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein (1818), Shelley shows her audience that while acquiring knowledge leads to survival for the Creature and power for Victor Frankenstein, the path to obtain this knowledge leads to the destruction of one’s self. Education and knowledge have major negative effects on both of the characters’ attitude, perception, and decisions. The life experiences of each character is dependent on the amount of knowledge that the character possesses. Knowledge gives Victor Frankenstein a superiority complex, and it changes the Creature’s perspective of the world and the people in it. The Creature, like a baby, is brought into the world with no prior knowledge of how society behaves.

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