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The Double-Edged Sword In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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As a species we have always strived towards the next best thing and in the day of technology the next best thing is robots and AI’s. This level of technology can help us in a plethora of ways from day to day chores for government agencies and the military. But there are people that do not believe that this level of technology will help us for the better. Some wonder if we will be able to control these creations and whether or not they will be ok with the fact that they work for us and are interests. This effect of the double edged sword has been a constant issue that we as humans have had to face but in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein this issue affects Victor and the monster. Victor is a man that wants to be a jack of all trades but his main focus is on alchemy and creating life. His thirst for knowledge leads him to create the monster which he hates with all his heart. This leads the monster to learn everything by himself. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the use of science, technology and knowledge is a double edged sword due to the constant conflict between the Creature and Victor. When Victor wanted to make the monster there was good intentions, which will lead to bad results. Victor as a young boy didn’t have a major father …show more content…

In the beginning Victor just wanted to learn how to create life, but when he does, he creates an ugly creature that he has no love for. When the Creature is alone, he must learn everything from scratch, but what he learns first give him a grim perspective on humanity. These two paths cross to cause everyone Victor loves to die by the Creature's hands and in the end their own lives are not spared. The double-edged sword is shown throughout the book by Victor's actions by creating the monster to the creature committing murders. All of this matters in the end because all this back and forth will lead to their own

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Jacob Opalka Mrs. Ramey 4 April 2016 English 12 CP Victor Frankenstein: a Deadbeat Father Figure (Rough Draft) One out of every three children living in America lives without a father figure in his/her lives. Children growing up without a father figure can develop emotional and/or behavioral problems. In some cases, these children even become aggressive and get into trouble with the law (“Statistics on the Father Absence” n.p.). Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, occurs in Geneva and Ingolstadt, and portrays Victor Frankenstein as a deadbeat father figure to his creation because he does not take responsibility for him, and he must ultimately deal with the consequences of his creature.

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley tells the story of passionate scientist Victor Frankenstein, whose devotion to science leads him to become obsessed with creating life, but his good intentions lead to a lifelong conflict with his problematic creation. This creature causes pain and suffering for Victor by killing his friends and family, which causes him to feel responsible for their deaths. Ambition’s dark and addictive side got the best of Victor, who became blinded by dreams of glory. Similarly, Don Quixote fails to identify the risks of ambition while exploring Spain. He wants to be a famous knight so badly that he begins to hallucinate obstacles that he must conquer.

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He became obsessed with the idea of creating life out of inanimate objects. Victor wanted to manipulate the power of life and wanted to discover the secrets of life and death and how to renew life. He abandons his creation because of the creature's appearance. It is understandable why some people argue that Victor was actually a victim because the monster killed many of his loved ones. But in actuality, Victor's hypocritical attitude made him like that.

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He uses the little that he knows to fuel his hatred towards humans and his creator. This shows the exponential growth of the problems that Victor has created as a result of his desire for knowledge. Not only did he create the destructive monster, but now the monster is using a hunger for knowledge, the very thing that created it, to do even more damage. This root cause is linked to everything that is causing Victor’s suffering. The monster also compares his relationship to Victor to that of God and Adam, wishing that he had the same supplication to his creator that Adam did, “I remembered Adam’s supplication to his creator.

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Personal morals must always trump job requirements regardless of the personal stakes, employees have responsibilities and duties to deny job requirements when they interfere with personal morals and values. On Wall Street, many powerful employers force their workers to complete horrendous tasks some of which would interfere with their personal beliefs and ideals. Many workers do not have enough self-respect to stand up to those who abuse their power, instead accept the demands, and let their morals be ignored, which mostly leads to negative consequences. Personal stakes can be ignored when morals are at stake, risk without definite sacrifice is an action which needs to be taken. Many people such as Jordan Belfort, and Albert

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The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley says a person is responsible for their actions if they do not weigh the possible consequences of their actions before making their final decision. Throughout the novel, Mary Shelley shows the consequences of actions that are done without proper thought beforehand. Victor Frankenstein wants to create life, he wants to be god, and his lust for this goal overtakes his common sense. Victor rushes into making his creature and then makes rash decisions which also contributes to his demise and the death of several of his close friends and family. The monster should be held responsible for his actions to a certain extent, however, his actions are influenced by Victor’s initial impetuous decisions.

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Ambition as propelling it is, however can lead to the demise of the person influenced by it. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, informs the reader of the consequences of ambition, by telling a story of man named Victor Frankenstein who is overwhelmed by his ambition to see the atrocities he commits. In his ignorance created a monster who served to be Victor’s mistake as he slaughtered his family members. The novel illustrates the dangers of ambition because it is the main reason of Victor’s downfall. Pursuing a desire too strongly as to cause obsession is what destroyed Victor.

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It is another liability that he brought onto himself. First, Victor, being a scientist, should have been aware of the precautions of creating a new life. He did not think of the aftermath that the monster might create. For example, it is stated, “The death of William, the execution of Justine, the murder of Clerval, and lastly of my wife… my father… he died in my arms” (87). Additionally, everyone that Victor ever cared about or loved died because of the creature murdering them.

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Victor questions why men so instinctively attempt to become superior to nature when men are also a product of nature. He criticizes that if humans reverted to our primal instincts, “hunger, thirst, and desire” (67) that we’d be free, or content with our lives. This is his subliminal self-reflection as he understands that seeking the secret to life, by creating the monster, did not bring him happiness but rather brought him misery and self-loathing. In this last line of the passage, Shelley highlights a major morale and theme of the story which is using science to tamper with nature, a critique against the enlightenment period. The consequences of Frankenstein’s creation have not only caused the death of William and Justine but will also become the reason for his own inevitable doom

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For example, when the Monster was exposed to a peaceful natural setting he states: “my [the Monsters] spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the future glided by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy” (Shelley 101). Another common interest between these two seemingly contradicting characters is their strong love of knowledge. Although their love for knowledge is obvious, their inability to control their obsession with it often results in something negative. Victor becomes obsessed with science and studying life. His obsession leads to the creation of the Monster, his biggest mistake.

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In the novel, Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, Victor and the Creature are the main references when it comes to the issues of morality. Several themes such as good versus evil, prejudice, and ambition & fallibility, the importance of friendship along with references to other famous texts like the Christian bible are manifested through the use of Victor and the Creature as they interact with each other allowing readers to construe examples of morality. Many debaters may argue the Creature is “evil” since a majority of his actions harm others while Victor is good because he was the victim and seeks to destroy his creation. However, one may counter this argument if they accentuate Victor is evil since he was the Creature’s creator,

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One of the first conflicts introduced in the novel begins when the main character Rector first enters the walled city of Seattle. While he is on his way to find his friend Zeke's body to bury it he becomes chased by something he cannot see through the blight of the poisoned city. It is described as being impossibly tall to be human, its footsteps loud and its breathing even louder. In his panic this creature's presence is described as dark and evil but he could tell it was intelligent from the way it acted as it chased him through the town. The chase itself was hopeless until he fell into a hole into the underground and became unsconcious, putting him into the care of the people who live in the Vaults as he falls into their laps.

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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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ENG-3U0 November 20 2015 Frankenstein: The Pursuit of Knowledge Throughout the course of their individual journeys, Victor Frankenstein’s extreme passion for gaining knowledge about creating life, Robert Walton’s curiosity to discover land beyond the North Pole and the monster’s eagerness to obtain knowledge about humans was the principal cause of each of their suffering. As such, In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the pursuit of knowledge is a dangerous path which leads to suffering. Victor Frankenstein develops a keen interest in discovering knowledge about living beings which ultimately results in his personal suffering as well as others suffering. To begin with, Victor embarks on an assignment through combining body parts and following various

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Throughout the novel, the main character Frankenstein, made many poor decisions that I would consider to be morally wrong and unethical. Frankenstein’s research and discoveries are ethically wrong because he was taking dead bodies from cemeteries, cutting off their limbs, and body parts to create a human like creature. He did not have anyone's consent to do this study causing it to be unethical, and he also should not be able to do this because he is playing the role of god. In the beginning of the book, Victor Frankenstein described to Walton that he had created a monster using body parts from a graveyard.

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