Consequences Of Rejection In Dante's Inferno And Frankenstein

Throughout Dante’s Inferno and Frankenstein, the reader is shown the impact that rejection has from both sides of the spectrum on to human beings. Most notably, this happens in the seventh circle of hell in Dante’s Inferno, and towards the end of Frankenstein when Victor denies the monster the creation of a female companion. Both stories deal with the consequences of rejection in different ways but both share a specific trait; violence. This is similar to what we are seeing in the 21st century, where high schoolers and young adults alike have committed heinous violent acts at places like their schools. The mental state and life experiences of these people have began to be studied find out why people were driven to commit such attacks. More times than not, there is a

According to Dr. Poornima Kumar of Aberdeen University, “Social rejection is one of the strongest proximal risk factors for depression and there are indications that rejection prospectively predicts depression.” (Kumar 1049) However, not everyone who is socially rejected goes to extreme lengths in combating their abuse, such as in school shooting events. Those events require a particular combination of factors according to Suet-Ling Pong, professor of sociology at Penn. State University; “First, the shooter…is subject to social exclusion, bullying, and teasing. Second, the shooter must suffer from psychological problems such as depression…third, the shooter must believe that unleashing the attack [on peers] will achieve his [or her] goals of… sending a public message. Fourth, schools and their communities must fail to identify troubled teens before their problems become extreme. The final factor is gun availability.” (Pong