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Mary Shelley's Eyes In Frankenstein

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Eyes are a lens of how we perceive and interpret the world around us. Eyes are beautiful, entrancing, and mesmerizing. However, eyes can also blind us to the harsh realities of society and they can deceive us in unthinkable ways. Throughout the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the symbol of eyes represents the blindness that characters face in regards to their relationship with Victor’s horrendous monster. Eyes represent curiosity which leads to a disastrous creation, innocence which leads to death, and finally the overall realization that creating life can lead to catastrophic results. Victor Frankenstein’s blindness to the results of his experiment causes him to become regretful in pursuing the creation of a life-like creature. Victor …show more content…

When Catherine Frankenstein decides to take in Elizabeth, an orphan, it’s up to Victor to take care of her. Elizabeth is Victor’s adopted sister whom he loves very much and admires her many features including “her smile, her soft voice”, but most importantly, for Victor, “her celestial eyes”. Her eyes “were ever there to bless and animate” everyone (19). It’s ironic that Victor describes Elizabeth’s eyes as “celestial” because in the end of the book, Victor’s monster murder’s Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s innocence and lack of knowledge of the monster was what ultimately killed her in the end.The monster also is the cause of Justine Moritz’s death. After the passing of Catherine Frankenstein, Justine comes to live with the Frankenstein family. When Victor discovers Justine was accused of killing William, he is appalled that someone so innocent could be incriminated of such a crime. Victor describes Justine as having “mild eyes [that] seemed incapable of any severity or guile” (58). Victor knows it was his monster who did the devious deed, but he could never admit that or he’d seem insane. Justine would never harm anyone as seen through her “mild” eyes, and yet it’s ironic that she was accused of manslaughter. It can be seen through both Elizabeth and Justines’ eyes, literally, that they were both innocent women who were taken advantage of by Victor's monster and thus they were both killed. Victor’s blindness to the monster’s capability to kill his family members makes him realize how he shouldn’t have pursued the action of creating this

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The biggest theme in Frankenstein is secrecy. There are multiple reasons to believe this in the book, and the movie Frankenweenie. In Frankenweenie Victor is forced to show Edgar how he brought his dog back to life to be able to keep Sparky a secret. When Victor first created the monster he was so scared he just left it alone, giving away that he doesn’t want to take responsibility for it or let anyone know that he was the one who created him. Victor could have avoided Justine being hung if he would have spoken up about the monster.

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For me, Justine is the biggest victim so far. Considering her background and the hardship she went through at an early age and being neglected by her family was indeed a tragic scenario; even though she felt love and comfort in the Frankenstein 's home. What 's really sad was when she was accused of killing William and was executed. Apparently, Victor knew his brother was killed by the monster, yet still he couldn 't do anything to save the girl 's life because he was scared and don 't want people to know he had created an awful

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Later on Justine is accused of a killing victor’s brother and she didn’t do it so she goes through a trial and they decide to kill her. At the end the monster kills Victor’s wife named Elizabeth because he is angry that victor wouldn’t create a companion for him. The monster learns to speak and read from the people. He would listen to them speak and he would watch them all day. He later began to understand what they were saying.

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When Victor arrived to the gates of the city, they are closed for that night and in between the lightning strike he saw a glimpse of the monster. He realizes that it had been two years since he had last seen his terrible creation. It came to him after that his creation had strangled his little brother. Victor knowing Creature killed his brother still does not reveal the source of the crime to the justice system, because he did not want it to fall back on him that he created this monster. He later learns that Justine now accused of the murder of little William.

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In order to protect the view he holds of himself, which stems from his god complex, Victor Frankenstein uses rationalization to shelter himself from the guilt derived from his indirect involvement with the murders of William and Justine. In allowing young Justine to confess to the murder of William, though she is innocent, Frankenstein experiences conflicted emotions. Victor writes that “such a declaration [of who the true criminal was] would have been considered as the ravings of a madman,” (Shelly 86). This rationalization of not telling the truth is because of his inability to take responsibility for his actions. In the same passage, Frankenstein describes the guilt and sadness he feels as “fangs of remorse” (86).

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The narrative introduces a minor character, one Justine Moritz as a catalyst for social examination. Justine’s brief segment in the narration of Frankenstein primarily highlights Victor’s callous nature. It effectively shows how easily a servant can be destroyed in societies that do not value them. There are two arguments in regards to Justine Moritz, the first that she is a convenient victim of the monster’s actions that of Victor’s silence. The second, acknowledging that she is a victim which places Justine under the weight of the monster’s actions and because of her low social status.

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This much is true for Victor’s failure to take responsibility for not only teaching his creation about life but also failure to take responsibility for the actions of his creation. “Frankenstein! You belong then to my enemy… you shall be my first victim” (153). Victor’s knows that he is responsible for the death of William because he abandoned his creation and made the monster learn the hard way that he would not be accepted into society. But he has no choice but to let Justine take the fall for the death of his brother because he fears being seen as a madman.

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It is clear that Dr. Frankenstein is in a regretful mindset when he states, “I suffered living torture.” Meaning that he knew it was never Justine who killed William. However, he would never be able to speak up because he is fearful that he will be perceived as mad by his family and by the public. This was just one of the consequences that Frankenstein has to face due to his creation. Frankenstein also recognizes the fact that it is ultimately his own fault that William has died and that Justine will be wrongly sentenced for his death.

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Duality is shown in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, a gothic tale of a scientist whom looks to advance the life-giving qualities of mother nature. Through this novel, Shelley proves that good and evil in human nature is not always simple to define, and that everyone has both of these qualities within them. The duality of human nature is shown through the characters of Victor Frankenstein and his monster, who are both heroes in the novel while simultaneously displaying anti-hero qualities. Shelley forces the reader to sympathize with them both but also creates gruesome ideas of the two. Frankenstein’s creature places himself in a submissive position when he begs his creator to have mercy on him and asking the creator to “create a female for [him] with whom [he] can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for [his] being.”

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An eye for an eye or the law of retaliation is the principle most people live their lives by. For the characters in Frankenstein, this concept is apparent as the main character, Victor, creates a monster and instantly abandons him which sets off the chain of events revolving around revenge. However, as Gandhi once stated, “an eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind” (Gandhi). Throughout the novel, the creature and Victor engage in a recurring cycle of vengeance, but these acts of revenge are bittersweet as in the end it destroys both of them. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley reveals how revenge consumes and destroys those who surrender to it.

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nkenstein is a novel written by Marry Shelley about a student of science named Victor Frankenstein , who make a monstrous but responsive being in an unconventional technical experiment. Shelley wrote it when her age was eighteen years old and the novel came when she was at the age of twenty. The first edition of her book was available in London and the second one in France. Frankenstein is basically filled with essentials of the Gothic novel and the Romantic Movement and is measured as one of the science fiction The aim of the study is to investigate about the mythical norms created by the society about beauty and ugliness and that if an ugly person reacts devastatingly then it’s just the mere reflection of the society that how they treat a person as we can witness in Mary Shelley Frankenstein.

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By removing blame from Frankenstein, the film negates a core theme of the book: the need to face the consequences of one’s actions. Subsequently, the film looses this level of moral depth. The consequences of Victor’s actions are further negated by the omission of the creature’s murders of William, Justine, and Elizabeth, all of which are the monster’s responses to Victor’s abandonment. Each of these actions has a profound emotional effect on Victor and his family in the novel,

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Beauty and ugliness is often used to justify the reaction of others in the novel, Frankenstein; in which the relation between external appearance and internal desires are shown to be related. The theme of how appearance affects judgement is often demonstrated through the characters response to the monster’s physical being. Shelley depicts this situation through Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the Delacey family, and through the monster himself. The use of appearance to determine judgement is shown to be a negative habit. By automatically associating ugliness with evil, and beauty with innocence, society unintentionally develops a negative being in those considered ugly, while at the same creating an illusion of innocence over beautiful individuals.

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As the book progresses, Frankenstein becomes more engrossed in the different aspects of science, and Shelley no longer uses natural scenes to describe what is happening around him, because of his disconnection with ‘appreciation of the unknown’. This aspect of his life is shown in this quote, “days and nights of incredible labor and fatigue... my cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement... my limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance... I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.”

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a gothic novel that tells the story of scientist, Victor Frankenstein, and his obsession with creating human life. This leads him to creating a gruesome monster made of body-parts stolen from grave yards, whom upon discovering his hideousness, the monster seeks revenge against his creator, causing Victor to regret the creation of his monster for the rest of his life. Shelley uses the literary elements of personification, imagery, and similes to give a vivid sense and visualization of Victor Frankenstein’s thoughts and feelings as well as to allow us to delve deeper into the monster’s actions and emotions. Throughout the novel, Shelley uses personification of various forces and objects to reflect the effect in Victor’s actions.

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