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Lack Of Knowledge In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Shelly seems to be very against the idea that knowledge leads to happiness. She seems more amiable towards the idea that ignorance is bliss. Yet, it seems more that the despair both characters face in Frankenstein is a result of a tainted society. Knowledge is the light that illuminates this corruption for Frankenstein’s monster. However, while knowledge opens the monster’s eyes, the scene that they first gaze upon is painted by Victor. The monster doesn’t become totally aware of his home instantly, and this journey is one during which Victor is completely absent to guide his child. The ability to perceive knowledge is an acquired skill that develops over time. A toddler can’t comprehend algebra, but they can learn language easier than an adult. Everything the monster knows has been self taught. All of his knowledge comes from either books or direct observation. Victor took no effort to soften the monster’s appearance; we can assume that the body parts used in his creation were of various skin tones, …show more content…

The monster lacks time too, he doesn’t have the time to introduce himself or to make a case without being judged. This isn’t the fault of the society he is apart of, rather it is reactionary, and something that must be helped from within. This is where Victor would have played a key role in the acceptance of frankenstein as a human being, or, at least, a humanlike entity. Parents today keep their children from viewing certain materials or playing with certain toys because they want to shape the narrative in which the children grow up. They know that a child will be affected by only seeing evil in the world as opposed to all the good there is. If a child woke up everyday and watched an ISIS beheading video, they would have a very different outlook on life than a child that watched Dragon Tales every

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Obtaining knowledge is seen as a positive objective, but sometimes it may come with a negative outcome. Attempting to discover something new without thought of morality can bring you disastrous events. Learning something new can disappoint you and leave you with no option but to walk away. An attempt to get knowledge secretly can make people uncomfortable with you. Knowledge can be thought of as power, and if you can’t limit yourself; this can damage people’s life and lead to loss of trust.

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1845 Words | 8 Pages

As a child, Victor was emotionally neglected by his father. He was never taught how to be a father because he did not have a good role model to look after. Consequently, when Victor’s creation came to life, he did not know how to act. He was scared and tried to run away from his problems. Since his creation has no parental figure to support and teach him, he develops behavioral problems and is very confused.

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977 Words | 4 Pages

Mary Shelly in Frankenstein described a character Victor who is cursed by his own knowledge. Young Victor fascinated by natural forces, learned chemistry and use his knowledge to generate a new life. Even though Victor succeeded in his pursuit, but the implication of his own knowledge brought curse not only to himself but his family and friends too. Victor created a monster who strangled his younger brother William to death, Justin Martinez an innocent Frankenstein family’s made accused of William’s death. An innocent Justin sacrificed her life because of Victor’s creation, and same for Victor’s best friend Henry and fiancé Elizabeth, they also lost their lives.

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478 Words | 2 Pages

He willingly chooses to stay away from everyone especially from the De Lacy family the creature saying; “I had sagacity enough to discover that unnatural hideousness of my person was the horror” (Shelly pg157 cp 14). Moreover the novel and the film demonstrate Victor’s glorious creation as a hideous being which in turn reflects the way Victor adopted to create the creature. He creates the monster from the dead body parts of human without any proper authority which can be considered as a criminal offense and against social ethics. Victor always considered people as a means to use for his purpose, he did not value the beliefs and emotions of others instead he always concentrated on his life with everyone else around him to serving his needs. Egocentric behavior of humanity is continued throughout generations in one form or another making this novel relevant after many decades.

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672 Words | 3 Pages

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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209 Words | 1 Pages

Victor Frankenstein is a deeply troubled man who lost his mother at a young age, which left him with an obsession with life and death. He gave up his health, family and friends in order to study bringing people back to life and that consumed him. Even after his science professors encouraged him not to, he continued to pursue his search but his end result, the monster was not at all what he intended on creating and was appalled at his creation and spent the rest of his life hunting it down. Victor had a degree of innocence about him which was ripped away by the monster. Mary Shelley made the reader's question if ignorance is bliss, because if Victor had discontinued his studies on reanimating the dead then he would have never made the monster

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746 Words | 3 Pages

The monster’s curiosity led him to educate himself. He read and adopted ideas of the book’s found in Victor’s jacket. These books include Milton's Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Greeks and Romans, and Goethe's Sorrows of Werter. Milton's book is about the creation story and Adam, which causes the monster to question his own existence and place in the world. Curious, he seeks for answers and finally finds Victor’s notebooks, which explain how the monster was created.

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1350 Words | 6 Pages

At the start of the book when the monster is first created Victor describes him as having proportional limbs and Victor having selected his features as beautiful. He has pearly white teeth and lustrous black hair. However as soon as the creature wakes up Victor regrets creating it in the first place and feels animosity towards his creation. However, as soon as Victor realizes that making this creature was a mistake the description of the monster does a complete turn when Robert describes him as “gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions…. His face was concealed by long locks of ragged hair; but one vast hand was extended, in color and apparent texture like that of a mummy” (253).

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454 Words | 2 Pages

The search of knowledge can help take away the doubt, but it can affect the ones around you. Victor doubts and knowledge cause the death of his wife, best friend, and his brother. Victor should have known that bringing something back to life would had consequences. His relentless search of knowledge did brought him suffering because he involved his family and didn't thought about the consequences. Victor’s passion about learning new things brought him to the creation of an ugly monster.

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1443 Words | 6 Pages

The power of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. However, it is not always the content or amount of knowledge that is dangerous. It is the person behind that knowledge that has the potential to bring danger to society. No tale represents this better than Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein. Monsters and myths can be scary or frightening to young children.

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389 Words | 2 Pages

The idea of knowledge in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley interprets knowledge as an evil pursuit. The knowlege is misused, due to Victor, the monster, and the interference with nature. Theses reasons are different perspectives that lead to tragedies. The novel Frankenstein identifies Victor's desire to gain knowledge as misusing it.

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839 Words | 4 Pages

Though his learning might not be as advanced as Victor’s, the monster was more than interested in learning. Shelley even incorporated some humor into the story by saying that the monster read Milton’s Paradise Lost. This is a very dense piece of literature for a creature that was unable to speak at one point. The monster reads everything that he can get his hands on. With this new knowledge, he tries to introduce himself to the blind Mr. Delacey but that sadly results in a brutal beating from the family.

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1420 Words | 6 Pages

ENG-3U0 November 20 2015 Frankenstein: The Pursuit of Knowledge Throughout the course of their individual journeys, Victor Frankenstein’s extreme passion for gaining knowledge about creating life, Robert Walton’s curiosity to discover land beyond the North Pole and the monster’s eagerness to obtain knowledge about humans was the principal cause of each of their suffering. As such, In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the pursuit of knowledge is a dangerous path which leads to suffering. Victor Frankenstein develops a keen interest in discovering knowledge about living beings which ultimately results in his personal suffering as well as others suffering. To begin with, Victor embarks on an assignment through combining body parts and following various

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1909 Words | 8 Pages

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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943 Words | 4 Pages

All three characters are on a search for knowledge and it plays a major part in their life and more importantly their fate. Here we can see both the journey and the end result, knowledge, posing danger. Victor Frankenstein is a perfect example of the consequences of knowledge. Victor sees the most loss and sadness associated with knowledge. He searches for the answers to create life and goes beyond normal human realm to inquire on them; “It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance ... or, in it highest sense, the physical secrets of the world” (21).

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