Mary Shelley's Literary Analysis

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Shelley criticizes and critiques many forms of life. For instance, I’m looking at how Shelley approaches the quest for knowledge. Throughout the book, Shelley critiques how different characters approach and react to adversity during their pursuit to discover something foreign to them. This is shown through Victor's reaction to the creature, Waltons decision making when being lost in the northwest passage, and the creature's attempt to acclimate to human society. All these instances show that Mary Shelley is critiquing the drive for knowledge by creating characters that were ill prepared for their own pursuits of knowledge.

Mary Shelley’s criticism of Victors inability to cope with the creatures grotesque appearance

However, unlike Victor, Shelley allows Walton to take responsibility for his actions and ultimately do what is best for the lives of his crew instead of continuing to pursue glory. We see this transition take place from his letters to start and end the book. Initially, Shelley makes Walton come off as cocky and braggadocious when he writes Margaret that she “rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise” (15) despite Margaret regarding it with “such evil forebodings” (15). Shelley designs Waltons self-confidence to be what ultimately puts he and his crew into a life or death situation. This is shown as we progress towards the end of the book, and Waltons cockiness turns into hysteria as both he and his crew are unprepared to take on the journey to the Northwest Passage. Mary illustrates Waltons ill preparedness when his crew “ look towards [him] for aid” (215) as they are “surrounded by mountains of ice, which admit of no escape” (215) but Walton is unable to deliver it (215). Shelley ultimately uses ill-preparedness to critique Walton’s attempt to pass through the Northwest Passage. The reason why she is critiquing and not criticizing is that Mary is pointing out flaws in Waltons process instead of saying that the whole journey was a waste of time and should never have been attempted. Also, Mary eventually allows Walton to

By creating the creature with no previous knowledge of how he came to be, Shelley is setting the table for the creature to have a hard time adapting to the world the creature was born in to. By creating the creature with “confused and indistinct.” (105) memories of the “original era”, Shelley is planting the seed of the tree that will eventually grow into the creature curiosity about himself and the world around him. She is also setting the creature up, like Walton and Victor to be unprepared for the crusade he is attempting. This is shown when the creature started to experience complex thoughts such “as why Felix appeared so miserable and Agatha so sad” (117) Shelley is using the creatures desperation for companionship and societal knowledge as a means to critique how the creature will pursue them. However, as the book progressed the creature only became more and more dissatisfied with society and himself. Shelley has the creature endure “months of misery” (223) as he struggled to obtain “impotent passions” (224) that “did not satisfy [his] own desires” (224) In the end Shelley is critiquing the quest for knowledge by showing that the more information that the creature, the more depressed he became. However, she is also showing that the creature always desired to know more and