ipl-logo

The Pain Of Knowledge Theme In Frankenstein

594 Words3 Pages

In the horror novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley conveys the themes of the pain of the pursuit of knowledge and the responsibilities of a creator to his creation through using allusion, juxtaposition, metaphor, and diction. To convey the Romantic theme of the pain of knowledge, Shelley utilizes allusion in order to show Victor’s rise and fall during his journey to accrue knowledge and glory. Shelley portrays Victor as a fallen angel. According to the text, “...like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.” This is a Biblical reference to angels cast out of Heaven for wronging God, often by committing one of the seven deadly sins. Victor, in his hubris, fell to a greed and lust for renown. Perhaps Victor is no angel; it could be that he is a God treading through the physical realm. Victor feels that he is doomed to burn eternally for his actions against …show more content…

The text illustrates Frankenstein’s God complex: “I trod heaven in my thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects.” Burning is commonplace in Hell, which is the antithesis of Heaven. Far too late, Victor grasps the implications of his playing God. The die had been cast and thrown where Frankenstein could not see it; his actions came back to torment him. In his pursuit of glory, Frankenstein decided to reanimate the dead. However, Victor was a neglectful creator; he rejected his creation--his Adam--and in the monster’s quest for affection and happiness, the monster became a fallen angel. To demonstrate the theme of the responsibility of a creator to his creation, Shelley uses an indirect metaphor to describe how Frankenstein’s ambition caused his downward spiral--the inception of which was the birth of his creation. Victor only exacerbated the issue by abandoning the monster both physically and psychologically. According to the text,

Show More
Related
823 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout Frankenstein, Shelley uses Victor to warn the reader of the dangers of aspiring to godliness, and the consequences one faces in the aftermath doing so, even going as far as to compare Victor to Satan, tempting the crew of Walton’s ship, in the book’s final pages. The Victor Shelley creates is very similar to the Satan created by Milton in his book, Paradise Lost, which explores the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. In Frankenstein, Victor speaks of his desire to create the Creature, saying, “I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow-creatures.” (152). Shelley’s diction choices, such as the word “useless” exemplify Victor’s excessive hubris, portraying him as a man who creates his Creature for, in his mind, the good of society.

Read More
911 Words | 4 Pages

Victor conveys that any human cannot withstand the ugliness of the face of the monster. A simile is used to compare a mummy risen from the dead is not even as close to disturbing as the despicable monster he created. The Dante references to Dante’s Inferno, Dante has come across many demons in hell but, even Frankenstein’s monster is viler than any demon in hell. In response to the monster being born Victor flees in horror. He wants nothing to do with the monster it frightens him so that he deserts it to fend for itself in his apartment not caring about any sort of trouble the monster can cause: “I then reflected, and the thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my apartment might still be in there, alive and walking about.

Read More
1009 Words | 5 Pages

Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, shows how a character who is portrayed as a tragic hero, in the beginning, can become the monster in the end. Victor and the Monster in Mary Shelley’s captivating novel showed how rival enemies share striking similarities. The similarities between the two tragic characters are driven by their dreary isolation from the secluded world. A large difference is that they were both raised in two completely different environments but understood the meaning of isolation. Physical differences are more noticeable rather than their personalities.

Read More
436 Words | 2 Pages

Victor also compares the monster to Satan. Logically, if the creation of Frankenstein/ the mortal enemy of Frankenstein is the equivalent to the creation of God/ Satan, then Frankenstein is considered to be “playing god.” Victor is also referred to many times in the text as the “creator”. What is contrasting about their biblical counterparts is that the monster (the equivalent to Satan) is capable of good and Victor (the equivalent to God) is capable of sin. This meaning behind the allusion is most clearly seen in chapter 15

Read More
3464 Words | 14 Pages

Valverde 1 Joseph Valverde Mr. John Salmon Ap Literature October 2014 Volume 2 - Chapter 1: Victor Frankenstein is going through great sorrow and grief as his conscience cannot handle the guilt caused by the death of the innocent Justine. He “wandered like an evil spirit” (Shelley 103) as he was unable to conceive peace. This state of mind preyed upon [his] health” (Shelley 103) as he was unable to cope with the present events and his guilt, this marks the mood at his part of the novel as that of despair and of regret. . Victor is then taken to Belrive in order to find peace, there he pondered about the outcome caused by his actions.

Read More
1868 Words | 8 Pages

Light and Dark in Frankenstein Throughout Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the reader is torn between the forces of good and evil, as well as which characters represent which force. Perhaps the most masterful element of this novel is conveying how an individual can not be judged as wholly good or evil, and how having elements of both traits greatly forms the human experience. By using the motifs of light and dark to represent the positives and negatives of humanity, Mary Shelley is able to effectively convey character traits, depict transitions of good and evil within characters, and employ haunting symbolism and imagery into the novel and transform it into a literary masterpiece. The use of light and dark as imagery in the novel could not be

Read More
1049 Words | 5 Pages

In Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, it scrutinizes the punishments when a man creates life, and plays the role of God. Victor Frankenstein, is at fault for the creature’s actions. Victor was looking for some honor and triumph, but when he accomplished his experiment, not only did it bring terror to Victor, but to the whole world. The monster never learned right from wrong and was never raised correctly, his first moment of life, all he experienced was the fear in Victor's emotion, and was abandoned right from the start. Victor selfishly isolated himself from society and ran away from his responsibilities which caused destruction to the people Victor cared for and loved deeply.

Read More
672 Words | 3 Pages

Dangerous Minds- Rough Draft Knowledge has the capability to be used for both good and evil. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, there is a consistent message throughout the novel showing the dangerous and destructive power that knowledge can have. Two key characters, Victor Frankenstein and his monster, are shaped through their obsessions with knowledge and the power and responsibility that it brings. Ultimately, Victor’s downfall is a result of his uncontrollable thirst for knowledge, and is brought about through the monster which is the embodiment of his obsession. Victor is a brilliant scientist who figures out a way to create life from death using galvanism, or electricity.

Read More
542 Words | 3 Pages

Have you ever been held responsible for the tragedies caused to others? For most the answer is no, however, for some, their actions have led to the misfortune of guiltless lives. In the novel, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, because of the absence of attention and teaching, the reanimated creation Frankenstein is unstable; Victor Frankenstein is who to blame. Two events that he should be accountable for are not training his creation to know right from wrong and abounding the monster which led to the murder of innocent people. Firstly, Shelley uses conflict of “human” versus nature to demonstrate the major idea that Victor Frankenstein is responsible for the loss of innocent lives.

Read More
454 Words | 2 Pages

He is saying that he left everything for his relentless search of knowledge and forgetting about his physical. I think that his suffering is do to the doubts that he had about life. When Victor gave life to the monster, he couldn’t believe the appearance of the monster that he just run away. This was another problem that caused his suffering because of his absences on taking care of the creature. Because of his lack of human appearance, society making something bad awake inside him rejects the monster.

Read More
974 Words | 4 Pages

"Have the courage to use your own understanding" is probably the best-known quotation by Immanuel Kant (Kant 58). He refers to the Age of Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, which was a major historical movement of the eighteenth century. The era was characterized by significant social and intellectual developments which led to several shifts in people’s way of thinking. Moreover, the era was accompanied by major scientific research and discovery. In her novel “Frankenstein’’ ,which was first published in 1818, Mary Shelley addresses numerous ideas of the movement which are embodied by the main characters, Victor Frankenstein and his monster.

Read More
1109 Words | 5 Pages

“If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us” Adlai E. Stevenson. The politician explains his perception of creativity in this quote along with its connection to ambition by relating determination and faith to the discovery of knowledge. He believes that nothing can restrict our drive to seek information when one entirely devotes himself to the pursuit. Similarly, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, Robert Walton, and the creature all attempt to acquire arcane knowledge at any and all costs. Their ambition drives them to take risks and even put the lives of themselves and others on the line.

Read More
1921 Words | 8 Pages

Such passion is seen in Victor’s ‘noble intent’ to design a being that could contribute to society, but he had overextended himself, falling under the spell of playing ‘God,’ further digging his grave as he is blinded by glory. His creation – aptly called monstrous being due to its stature, appearance, and strength – proved to be more of a pure and intellectually disposed ‘child’ that moves throughout the novel as a mere oddity, given the short end of the stick in relation to a lack of familial figures within his life, especially that of parents. Clearly, Victor Frankenstein had sealed his fate: by playing God he was losing his humanity, ultimately becoming the manifestation of Mary Shelley’s hidden desires, deteriorating into The Lucifer Principle by which the author Howard Bloom notes social groups, not individuals, as the primary “unit of selection” in human psychological

Read More
656 Words | 3 Pages

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a gothic novel that tells the story of scientist, Victor Frankenstein, and his obsession with creating human life. This leads him to creating a gruesome monster made of body-parts stolen from grave yards, whom upon discovering his hideousness, the monster seeks revenge against his creator, causing Victor to regret the creation of his monster for the rest of his life. Shelley uses the literary elements of personification, imagery, and similes to give a vivid sense and visualization of Victor Frankenstein’s thoughts and feelings as well as to allow us to delve deeper into the monster’s actions and emotions. Throughout the novel, Shelley uses personification of various forces and objects to reflect the effect in Victor’s actions.

Read More
943 Words | 4 Pages

The Dangers of Knowledge Frankenstein, a novel written by Mary Shelley, is notoriously accredited for its development and implication of multiple themes. Set in the 1700’s, Frankenstein is a gothic fiction telling of isolation, knowledge, and nature. The biggest of these being knowledge and inevitably its consequences. With knowledge comes question; What poses the most danger? The knowledge itself, or the journey to gain information?

Read More

More about The Pain Of Knowledge Theme In Frankenstein

Related Topics

Open Document