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The Monster In John Milton's Paradise Lost

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“The creature is bitter and dejected after being turned away from human civilization, much the same way that Adam in “Paradise lost was turned out of the Garden of Eden. One difference, though, makes the monster a sympathetic character, especially to contemporary readers. In the biblical story, Adam causes his own fate by sinning. His creator, Victor, however, causes the creature’s hideous existence, and it is this grotesqueness that leads to the creature’s being spurned. Only after he is repeatedly rejected does the creature become violent and decides to seek revenge” (Mellor 106). This creation allegory is made clear from the beginning with the epigraph from John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), which begins the novel. In an attempt to further …show more content…

So while the laws are able to condemn the creature, they do not allow the creature to be a victim of a crime. The laws that show the creature as a criminal can apply to embodied subjects, but to be a victim you must have a specifically human body. Despite all the creature’s efforts, the fact that his body appears the way it does makes it so that he will never be recognized as a human, and is therefore outside of society norms created by them …show more content…

He has spent almost two years of his life completely focused on his task, even at the expense of his own personal well being. Yet his beautiful dream is now completely gone and all Victor sees is horror. With the same amount of intensity that he desired to complete his task, he now desires to take back and forget the experience. Victor is “unable to endure the aspect of the being [he] had created”. He genuinely cannot stand the sight of the creature. If there was a person who should be able to overcome the creature’s physical presence, it is Victor. Not only is Victor the creator, but he also put so much of his own time and effort into the creature. But the creature’s body is too hideous. Furthermore, Victor attributes his change in feeling to “human nature”. This contrasts with the horrifying description that the reader is just given of the creature. Here Victor is explaining the creature’s disgusting body, and explaining his reaction to it as human nature. Victor goes on to tell Walton the following: Oh! no mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived. Shelley

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Everything from the creature being created has Victor so fearful and he finds himself stuck in his thoughts not letting himself come back to reality and see what’s really going on. Will he ever let his thoughts come back to life in the real? I think he will because in future he will have no other choice but to get over his feeling. 5) Chapter 13, Page 109 "

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The Mad Scientist By Dani Lelinski Although the book “Frankenstein” is a work of fiction, it presents the reader with many moral dilemmas. Mary Shelley’s main character, Victor Frankenstein, is most often presented with these ethical choices and, more often than not, fails miserably. Victor makes a living creature out of body parts and is soon horrified with the results.

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She makes him seem like the most hideous thing ever seen by human eyes. She describes it as “I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs”(Shelly pg.79). She makes the reader feel bad for Victor because the reader knows he works hard on the creature. However, know reader should feel remorse for Victor leaves his creature.

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Throughout Frankenstein, Shelley uses Victor to warn the reader of the dangers of aspiring to godliness, and the consequences one faces in the aftermath doing so, even going as far as to compare Victor to Satan, tempting the crew of Walton’s ship, in the book’s final pages. The Victor Shelley creates is very similar to the Satan created by Milton in his book, Paradise Lost, which explores the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. In Frankenstein, Victor speaks of his desire to create the Creature, saying, “I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow-creatures.” (152). Shelley’s diction choices, such as the word “useless” exemplify Victor’s excessive hubris, portraying him as a man who creates his Creature for, in his mind, the good of society.

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His appearance was why he was judged this way. Society viewed him as a monster based on his appearance and not what was on the inside. This sort of judgement and hatred towards his appearance was injustice. The only justice in the book was when the blind man listened and spoke to the creature and when he saved the drowning girl. All of the injustice came from the drowning girl's father, Victor, and the rest of the DeLacey family.

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Victor describes his moments as,“I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and

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When the Creature comes to life, Victor sees how ugly and terrifying he looks. He is horrified and runs away from this living thing. On the day the Creature ‘awakes’ he is very confused and cold. He doesn’t know how to live like a human.

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From the moment he is created, the creature knows he is not wanted by Victor. Shelly writes, “Unable to endure the aspect of the being

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Brandon McCormick Ms. Headley English 2013 8 December 2014 Allusions to Paradise Lost in Frankenstein In the nineteenth century gothic novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses numerous allusions within her novel that can easily be interpreted by the reader. These allusions make it easier for readers to understand the characters and compare their circumstances throughout the story. The most significant and most used was from John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. It is known that, “…Paradise Lost stands alone in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries atop the literary hierarchy, and Milton’s epic is clearly rooted in the history of Puritanism and in the bourgeois ideal of the individual, the ‘concept of the person as a relatively autonomous self-contained

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Victor does not handle his monster, or his fears, well. When Frankenstein first sees his monster, he immediately “escaped, [from the room the monster was in] and rushed down stairs. p50” As the monster is an externalization of Frankenstein’s fears, this escape, this inability to so much as look at the monster, can be interpreted as Frankenstein’s inability to acknowledge his fears and anxieties. Like with anxiety, denying the monster’s existence only causes him to grow more destructive.

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A timeless human goal has always been to set visionary goals to advance the coming generations. Although many results can be successful, a great number of them can turn out deadly. In the novel, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley illustrates the result of a man’s visionary motive of creating life, which consequents into the birth of the deadly creature. The creatures understanding of justice is based on eliminating anyone or anything preventing him from reaching his goal; accordingly, his actions to attempt revenge upon Victor only led to his downfall throughout the novel. The creature’s understanding of justice and it’s revenge against Victor is the driving force of the story because it builds up the anticipation the reader has for the final confrontation.

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Victor mentions how he had to make the creature large so it didn’t slow his work. Then when the creature comes to life, Victor doesn’t explain how actually large it was (Clark 257). One can then see that Victor only uses physical characteristic in describing the creature. Victor then continues to run out of the room and is seen that he is a coward. When he runs one sympathises with the creature because it is similar to a newborn child.

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Victor selfishly creates the Creature to gain prestige, pretentiously claiming himself as a human god when he succeeds and saying it was for the sake of humanity. In reality, he creates a grotesque being and abandons it the moment his illusions shatter, making the creature a victim because he denies the responsibility of raising it causing hardships for it. Victor also believes the creature is a reprobative individual since it kills his brother and foists Justine’s execution, thus he acts inimical towards it throughout the whole novel as he invectively exclaims, “Abhorred monster! Fiend that thou art! The tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes” (93).

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Do you consider the monster a human? We are already know the meaning of human, but are we know what the monster is? The monster in people’s mind generally is the one who has horribleness, ugliness, or the unnatural body. Will it have some people do not look only appearance but his or her heart.

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In reality, he is disgusted by the sight of his creation so he abandons it leaving it all alone in the world without any guidance and runs away to the next room. Victor himself suffered from being a social outcast and now he bestowed the same feeling onto the creature by abandoning him. By treating the creature as an outcast, “he will become wicked … divide him, a social being, from society, and you impose upon him the irresistible obligations—malevolence and selfishness” (Caldwell). Not only is Victor selfish for abandoning his creature but he is shallow as well. Instead of realizing that he achieved his goal of bringing life to an inanimate body he runs way because of how hideous it is.

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