Influence From The Environment In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Influence From the Environment In various different situations, people all react differently. People will always be products of the environment in which they grew up. Being a product of your environment depends on not only where you grew up, but also on the people around you: parents, friends, teachers, etc. In Crime and Punishment, Sonia is the tragic product of a situation that her father put their family in. Her father was a drunk absentee so she was forced into prostitution to support her family. Raskolnikov overhears this story in a bar one night from her father, Marmeladov. “And here I, her own father, here I took thirty kopeks of that money for a drink! And I am drinking it! And I have already drunk it!” (Dostoyevsky 180). Sonia then ends up with Raskolnikov, who is a murderer, when she had the potential to do better with her life. “[we] were continually making plans for the future; both counted on settling in Siberia within five years at least” (Dostoyevsky …show more content…

Victor Frankenstein is a product of his environment. “When my father returned from Milan, he found playing with me in the hall of our villa a child fairer than pictured cherub—a creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois of the hills […] the result was that Elizabeth Lavenza became the inmate of my parents' house—my more than sister—the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and my pleasures.” (29). Victor’s parents basically adopted a girl for Victor to marry. This upbringing would of course lead to later parental problems in life, specifically with the monster. “When I reflected on his crime and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation. I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I when there have precipitated him to their base”(Shelley 146). Victor grew to hate the monster he created after the monster killed