In the novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the two main characters, Victor Frankenstein and his creature, both display a sense of moral ambiguity. Each character has committed both good and evil alike, and neither knew the consequences of what they had done. However, Victor Frankenstein is generally the morally ambiguous character by his treatment of his creation and his own imperious personality. He wanted to be able to help science by recreating life or bringing it back, but at the same time, he did not want to consider the consequences of doing so. Victor tries to prove himself as a good moral character in the relationship between his creation and himself.
In the book, Victor becomes too involved in reading rather than making friends at his university in England so he decides to create a monster out limbs from dead people. He soon realizes that he is terrified of the creature and flees his apartment; later the monster escapes. After the death of Victor’s mother, he soon falls into a deep depression while his younger brother William is mysteriously murdered and his sister Justine pleads guilty and is killed because of her “actions”. This makes Victor go down a deeper hole of depression and goes to the forest to rehabilitate himself. In the forest he runs into the monster and the monster, now educated and able to speak, tells him his story of what happened when he left.
Victor builds the monster, disregarding any potential consequences, and begins the process of bringing it to life. As soon as it awakens, Victor, “ … escaped, and rushed down stairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited…”(Shelley 60). Victor runs away from his newly born monster, not considering the repercussions of his actions. At this point the monster had not been any sort of a threat to Victor, but his irrationality led him to distance the monster from himself.
Parenthood is in the eyes of many a lifelong goal; however, this goal brings great responsibilities for all those who strive to achieve it, and out of all the responsibilities for is given if they achieve this goal, teaching the sought after child in the world’s ways is one of the most important, but some parents cannot or will not do this for their child, which leads can the child on a destructive path. A great literary case of this situation is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in which not only does the main character Victor Frankenstein neglects his creation; he also does not take responsibility for the actions his creation over the course of the novel. Victor possesses total responsibility for his creation and is culpable of his creation’s crimes because of his
When you think of a monster, you think of some gory or inhuman looking creature, but ever so rarely is it a man. In my opinion, Victor is the true monster in Frankenstein. In the book, Victor stands idly by while his friends and family are picked off one by one by his abandoned creation. Victor depicts his creation as the monster throughout the book and displays a clear distaste and hate towards it. Victor never reveals his creation in fear of the consequences, but what is worse than losing friends and family?
Soon enough after his neglect, the creation becomes lonely, and he threatens Victor with the promise to murder the people Victor loved if he did not create him a companion. Victor describes the process of creating a second creature, “In the meantime, I worked on; and my labour was already considerably advanced. I looked towards its completion with tremulous hope, which I dared not trust myself to question but when I was intermixed with obscure foreboding of evil that made my heart sicken in my bosom. ”(178) Although he had done it once before, which the experiment went horribly wrong, Victor attempts the experiment once again, only this time out of self-preservation and the preservation of the few people Victor had left that he
Frankenstein and tells him everything he has been through the last couple years, the creation has one request, a female companion to spend the rest of his days with. The creation claims that if he is given a companion to spend his days with, then he will leave the world of man and cause no further harm to Victor or anyone else. At first “(Victor) was moved” (135), by the creations argument, as he sees that all the creation wishes for is to be happy with a partner. However, this sympathy is short lived and Victor becomes scared of what the female counterpart might do or how she will act, so he denies his creation the one thing that will ease his soul. Victor does eventually agree to this plan, but only after being threatened and convinced that the creation and his companion will live in isolation.
The sins committed by Victor Frankenstein, the creator, cannot overshadow the heinous acts perpetrated by the creature he brought to life. Although Victor's reckless ambition and obsession with playing God led to the creation of an abomination, the creature's sins reflect a deeper moral corruption. From the onset, Victor neglects his responsibility as a creator, abandoning his creation and leaving him to fend for himself in a hostile world. However, the creature's sins, driven by isolation and the rejection he faced, demonstrate a profound level of depravity. Murdering innocent individuals, including Victor's loved ones, the creature's sins extend beyond mere neglect and venture into the realm of intentional malevolence.
The monster states here that he has been abandoned by his creator and is not accepted by society. Victor was not only
Again do I vow vengeance; again do I devote thee miserable fiend, to torture and death. Never will I give up my search, until he or I perish; and then with what ecstasy shall I join my Elizabeth and my pilgrimage”(198). Victor thought about all of this loved ones that the Creature killed as the result of abandonment. Victor and the Creature have a true vengeance for one another. The true source of Victor and the Creature 's animosity is their unparalleled hatred for themselves.
Victor demonstrates how much of a monster he really is with his selfish actions and his lack of compassion towards others, especially towards his creature. Victor is a very self-absorbed person, and has no compassion for the feelings of others. When Victor created his being, he did it out of an aspiration for greatness; a desire to accomplish what no man had done before. Victor values not the life with which he endows the creature, but the resulting glory and praises his creature, and others, will give him. Victor believes “a new species would bless [him] as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to [him]” (52).
The monster’s ways of murder did not end here, for he was willing to make Victor’s life terrible if he did not get what he wanted. Specifically, once he finished telling his tale, the monster asked for a companion like himself to be with, yet Victor refused. In response, the monster threatens him when he stated, “I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my archenemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care; I will work
The story of Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley, is an extravagant and outstanding novel of the 1800’s. Frankenstein is a novel based in the late 18th century highlighting three male characters: Victor Frankenstein an enthusiastic and admiring scientist, an unnamed Creature of Victors making and Walton a captain managing a voyage to the Arctic who relayed the stories of Victor and the Creature to his sister. The relationship between the creature and Victor remains a controversial topic to this day- are they enemies, or is the Victor the Creature? The idea that two characters coexist within one individual is not a popular one, but, can be understood from a psychological viewpoint and a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder. There is
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.
In Frankenstein, there is a question of what it means to be fully human. Not in an anatomical form, but in an emotional and psychological way. In Frankenstein there is a definite point in which both victor and the monster cease to be human and become instead the animals both believe the other to be. Shelley tries to portray how allowing oneself to be governed by their emotions will destroy one’s life, and the lives of others, at a fundamental state.
