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The relationship between victor frankenstein and the creature essay
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Who is to be responsible for the creature’s actions? The creature himself, or his creator, Victor Frankenstein? When one sees the destruction that the creature causes, they can be quick to judge both. Some will say that the creature is responsible because he himself is the one doing the actions. Others will say that these actions would not have happened or could have been prevented, if the creature had never been created or if Victor could have controlled the creature.
“People think responsibility is hard to bear”. It’s not a problem. I think that sometimes it is the absence of responsibility that is harder to bear. You have a great feeling of importance” (Henry Kissinger). Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is about a young scientist named Victor who goes against the laws of nature to create a superior being which leads to his downfall and destruction.
Mary Shelley was twenty-one years old when she wrote Frankenstein. Therefore, the effects of her parents were still fresh. That, combined with inspiration from her literary husband, created a large theme in her novel, the role of parents. Through the lack of caring progenitors in Frankenstein, Shelley is arguing that detached parents allow for a negative upbringing, therefore urging them to be present in one's life. The first hinting of the parent theme is Victor Frankenstein’s guardians.
Voltaire, a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher, stated that “With great power comes great responsibility.” Taking responsibility is recognizing and admitting the choices we have made, how we carried out this choices into actions, and their outcomes. There should be a correspondence between the actions we choose and our moral values. Having moral responsibility is one of the things that separate us from animals. As social beings, we have learned to follow the rules of society and to fulfill certain obligations.
At this point in the novel, what assertion(s) can be made about Victor? Think specifically about his behavior during Justine’s trial, with his various treatments of his creature thus far. What are Victor’s responsibilities regarding what has happened so far? Is he responsible? Partially?
In modern era, many continue to push forth the ideal that everyone deserves basic human rights, regardless of their physical appearance or their origins. The creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) had unordinary origins which influenced his character and relationships he developed with others. In his case, the creature’s physical deformities caused him to initially be rejected by his creator, Victor Frankenstein, and other people he encountered who would only see a surface unpleasant to the eye. As the story unfolds, Shelley develops the timeless message that everyone deserves to satisfy the yearning necessity for companionship and happiness, despite one’s beginnings in the world, lest they risk losing their humanity. Frankenstein, the creature, demonstrates on several occasions his ability to feel in the same way as humans and other living beings can feel.
Change, itself, is scary. Nothing embodies that scariness more than the dynamic characterization of the Creature. The reader sees the growth of the creature from its genesis, including moments like this, “In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain. How strange, I thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects!” (Shelley 91).
In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein creates a creature as an experiment because he couldn’t believe that his mother had died, he just couldn't accept this, so he created Frankenstein to see if he could bring the dead back to life. He looked at his creature surprised and with fear, Victor later regrets his decision. The two reasons the creature is human is that he feels emotions and he can think like a human. The first reason I say Frankenstein is like a human is because he feels emotions.
Victor Frankenstein practically spent years on his creation and studied the science of anatomy to provide ideas for his creation to withstand human life by itself. For example, he would dedicate himself to finishing his goal that was resurrecting the dead by the theory of galvanism, “...forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses.” (Shelley 18). Frankenstein realized that that was the only way he was going to get anywhere in the process of a decaying body. He found out how worms would inhabit the eyes and brain of a human.
The creature learned to self educate himself by observing the world around him, much like the development of any human being, “a strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, I saw, felt, heard, and smelt, at the same time,” and eventually “learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses. ”(95) He travels through the forest, learning to use his senses and survival skills however his hunger soon drives him to leave the forest and enter into society. He eventually happens upon a village, where he first experiences the reaction of his presence. In an attempt to cure his hunger, he stumbles into a small hut where he is greeted with shrieks and violence, “...some fled, some attacked me, until grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped into the open country and fearfully took refuge….” (98) Because the creature has no knowledge of his origins, he struggles with understanding why he is being treated the way he is.
The creature, referring to the monster created by Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, has a crave in establishing an actual relationship with human beings within his character. As the scene contains his interaction with the cottagers would suggest, he becomes interested in human culture and is amazed by how words can express pleasure, pain and sadness. He finds the naming of objects interesting as well, and feels delighted whenever he learns the meaning or when pronounced the word correctly. He decided to use the time which Felix taught Safie English to improve his own language skills, and the learning of the “science of letters”, grammar, has opened before him a field of wonder and delight. The reason why he became interested
In the story, Frankenstein, the author Mary Shelley describes the process in which Victor Frankenstein used to construct his creation of a creature, but also the emotions of how a creator feels and his responsibility to his creation. To begin with, Frankenstein started his creation with the idea of using electricity and galvanism to bring life back from the dead. He first started off by collecting parts of the body from churchyards to use for his creature. For example, Frankenstein states, “I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame.” (Shelley 20).
Victor Frankenstein is the main character in this novel written by Mary Shelley- He grows up in Geneva, Switzerland with his adopted sister, mom and dad. Victor is during his youth very interested in ancient and outdated alchemists. Even though his dad constantly reminds him to quit that interest he retains to explore this. His insistent interest later on leads him to the University of Ingolstadt, where Victor gets to know new thoughts and ideas encountering science.
There are many monsters in history such as Hitler and Joseph Stalin. These people are considered monsters due to them killing millions of people. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein there are many monsters, but the main three are The Creation, Victor Frankenstein, and society. Frankenstein took place in Geneva. Victor Frankenstein decided that he wanted to create life which is how The Creation was born.
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.
