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Human Nature in Mary Shelleys frankenstein
Literary analysis of Frankenstein
Literary analysis of Frankenstein
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Charity Cochran Mrs. Harvey English 10 3 November 2022 In the book Frankenstein we read about how a man wants to create life, and how his creation doesn’t turn out the way he imagined it in his own mind. Frankenstein was very fast to judge what he had made just on how he looked . He treated his creation like it was nothing; threw it away like trash. “As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost of malice and treachery.”
Knowledge can be Blessings and Curse A teenage girl Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein in the 18th century. A Gothic novel Frankenstein deals with two genres, Gothicism and science fiction. Victor, one of Mary Shelly’s characters represents man’s pursuit of knowledge which ultimately leads towards the path of destruction while another character Robert Walton implemented his knowledge wisely to get benefits for the society. Mary is indicating to the society that mankind has to pay full attention to science and scientific innovations in order to avoid the catastrophic events due to misuse of knowledge.
In the film Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein the theme of mistreatment based off physical appearance is portrayed through Frankenstein 's monster. The society is often fearful of the creature and made judgements of his actions based solely off his disturbing physical appearance, without knowing his true characteristics. Even Victor, the man who created the fearful monster eventually abandons him because he is is appalled by his creation. He believed that by creating a being made of the finest parts, the end result would be of equal quality, but when the monster awakens, Victor can see what he has created and recognises that he has done wrong. The creation of an unnatural being, by unnatural means ultimately disgusts Victor.
“All men hate the wretched; how, then, I must be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things” (92). This quote, in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, is very moving. The monster feels rejected by everyone who sees him and more importantly by his creator, Victor Frankenstein. They are appalled by his appearance and cast him away. People are often judged by their outward appearance.
Frankenstein’s beauty George Eliot once said, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” George Eliot was a prominent author in the 1850s who wrote about human struggles and a more realistic view of society. This quote is ubiquitous but contains the same amount of truth as it does popularity. It is not fair to judge people by appearance since that does not determine their personality. In addition, Mary Shelley explores this topic in the book Frankenstein.
Humanity's unjust beauty standards affect whether someone is or isn't treated as a human being and whether someone is or isn't a “monster" merely based on their appearance and physical attributes. The evidence of this is first presented in the novel when Frankenstein describes the physical features of his creation. He says that the things that made his creature beautiful “only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion, and straight black lips'' (45). Frankenstein's first thought of what he had created was a judgment, he looked at the being and immediately felt disgusted and fearful, so much so that he ran away. His abandonment of the being then leads to further issues that make the being the monster that he is.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein presents important social criticism. Shelly focuses, in particular, on importance of forgiveness, betrayal, acceptance in society. Learning to forgive yourself and others is an important thing to know how to do or you’ll be holding on to useless hatred and pain all of your life; the same way the monster, Frankenstein, was doing. “Forgive me. Everywhere I go, they hate me”.
During the 1840’s, America saw the greatest proportional influx of immigrants in the U.S. history. Many hordes of Europeans boarded ships to seek opportunity in the United States because of political unrest and religious persecution. The German and Irish were two of the main of the main groups that fled across the Atlantic Ocean and settled in American soil. Immigration has continuously had a huge impact in United States and has been vital to our society. Even though the Germans and Irish migrated almost at the same time, both had differences and similarities in the aspects of motives for leaving Europe, settlement in the U.S., assimilation, religion and how they contributed to a growing American culture.
In both The Picture of Dorian Gray and Frankenstein, Shelley and Wilde offer an insight to British people in the nineteenth century; they focus too much on outward appearance versus the character of a person. Dorian asserted that “[e]ven those who had heard the most evil things against him . . . could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw him” (Wilde 111). Dorian’s acceptance from society comes from his looks, not his actions. Oppositely, Victor Frankenstein’s creation receives rejection from society for his looks, not his actions.
The blatant rejection of the monster in Frankenstein highlights the characters flawed understanding of humanity. The novel suggests that humanity is not just about physical appearance, but also about one's actions, emotions, and intentions. The monster, despite his looks, possesses human-like qualities such as the ability to feel emotions like love and anger. When the monster first confronts Frankenstein, he says, "I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me" (Shelley 90).
Beauty and ugliness is often used to justify the reaction of others in the novel, Frankenstein; in which the relation between external appearance and internal desires are shown to be related. The theme of how appearance affects judgement is often demonstrated through the characters response to the monster’s physical being. Shelley depicts this situation through Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the Delacey family, and through the monster himself. The use of appearance to determine judgement is shown to be a negative habit. By automatically associating ugliness with evil, and beauty with innocence, society unintentionally develops a negative being in those considered ugly, while at the same creating an illusion of innocence over beautiful individuals.
In the novel Frankenstein, the monster created by Frankenstein shows some human qualities. Some qualities that make people human are reason, pain, anger, sadness, growth, and ultimately being made by God; the monster expresses the human qualities of pain, anger, sadness, and reason, but he does not have the quality of being made by God, and growth. One of the first qualities that the monster exhibits is reason. When the monster is sharing his story with Frankenstein, he explains how he discovered the rules of fire by saying, “ I quickly collected some branches; but they were wet, and would not burn.
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
The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a science fiction story about a creature created from non-living matter, by a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein. The conflict between society and Frankenstein’s creature is largely perpetuated by a split between those considered attractive, and those who are not. The conflict and language use in Frankenstein demonstrate that most of society judges others based on their physical appearance, which leads to excluding those who fall outside the accepted definition of beauty and sometimes life-threatening consequences for both groups. Frankenstein and his parents demonstrate that they also fall victim to the habit of judging others initially based off of their appearance. The Frankenstein parents first
Victor Frankenstein could have prevented the discrimination by taking responsibility of his own creation and not judging the creature by its looks. Unfortunately lookism is still present today by judging a person just by a glance. This can be resolved if people would take time to know a person. It is essential this issue is discussed because it could reduce to violence
