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Perception In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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The theme of perception and acceptance based on appearance is highly emphasized on in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We currently live in a world where factors like looks, physical characteristics, carriage, fashion taste, knowledge, intelligence, and color of skin, are used as yardsticks of acceptance into the society. In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein unfortunately creates an ugly creature that has the appearance of a monster. The creature has to face the challenge of rejection by its creator and the society. For an outcome it has no control over, the monster is inhumanely judged by the society it is created into, thereby resulting in a problem of identity crisis. How far can unfair rejection and judgement on one’s appearance and intellect …show more content…

The story of the monster in Frankenstein is closely related with the social problem of racism that is prevalent in our society. People get constantly judged based on the color of their skin and racial orientation. After giving life to the creator, Victor instantly notices the error of the disfigured stature and yellow skin of the monster. "His [the creator's] yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles" (Shelley). Although the problem of racism today is not as intense as it was in the yesteryears, the discrimination between blacks and whites still exist and pose a threat to positive personal …show more content…

Every human being want to feel special and important. No one appreciates wrong judgement and rejection. The monster is furious about the way it is treated by its creator and the society. Thus, he develops into a monster and becomes homicidal in a bid to take revenge on its creator. Similar cases are prevalent in our society today. Children grow into criminals as a result of the rejection and hostile perception they receive from their environments. Homeless men and women develop negative personalities in order to survive in a world where they are judged wrongly and rejected. People of color become insecure and face inferiority complex issues because of the unequal treatments they receive daily in a society where skin color is used as basis for

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that the creature possesses which they can resonate with. It is enough that he is objectively different from the identifying criteria. To be fair, Malchow qualifies his argument by stating Shelley did not specifically create Frankenstein’s creature in the fashion of a “Negro monster [...], but rather [...] she dredged up a bogyman which had been constructed out of a cultural tradition of the threatening ‘Other’” (103). Shelley knows that groups do not need an explicit identity to discriminate against an individual; conjuring up an exotic canvas, in which they can impress their own biases and discrimination, serves Shelley’s narrative immensely. Thus, in a sense, Lew is right in identifying that the root of how Shelley incorporates the discrimination of others in her text is by using the imagination associated with oriental exoticism.

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