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The Role Of Ambition In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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When one thinks of Frankenstein, they think of a terrible monster destroying buildings and murdering people, but the monster is not named Frankenstein. The creator is Victor Frankenstein and the monster does not have a name. The book is called Frankenstein and it is written by Mary Shelley. In the book, Victor Frankenstein is studying and has a passion for science. One day on a stormy night, Victor ambition grew and made the dead come back to life. Victor did not like the creature, so he ran away from his problems. Throughout the whole story, ambition plays a role.Victor has ambition, but so does every other character such as Robert Walton and the monster. All of their desires all different, but it does reflect back on one another. …show more content…

The monster wants to fit and make a friend since he is also lonely. “The monster had a rough journey, to fit in and make a friend. He met the DeLacey’s, but when he showed himself to them, they shooed him away because he was ugly. The were quick to judge them, it left him in pain. So, finally he went to find Victor and tell him his harsh adventure and demand for a companion. So, he asks Victor to do a deed for him. “You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do, and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede” (Shelley 156). The monster hope is to have a friend and not to be judge by his appearance. He wants to be able to be happy and live in peace, so if victor made him, he can make another one.
Given these points, Frankenstein provides an ideal escape for ambition. The desire causes many feelings for the characters and they do outrageous things to achieve it. The examples are Victor studying, which causes him to become blind and create the monster, Walton wants a friend to express himself, and the monster also wants a friend and wants to fit in without being judged for his appearance. Ambition is the best way to provide the characters to have aspiration to prior the story of

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The creature wants to take revenge on Victor for abandoning him and causes Victor grief by killing the people he cares about. When the creature kills, Victor feels responsible and guilty of the murders. He continually breaks down with each death by “his” hands, which makes him go mad. The task of creating a monster turned Victor into a monster

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"I, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavoring to bestow mutual pleasure. I was now alone. In the university whither I was going I must form my own friends and be my own protector" (26). The isolated Victor is different in several ways including his manner, and the way he goes about his education, which is more focused and ultimately more obsessive. He has no one to comfort him and this leads to the madness of creating the monster.

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When he does, he complains about being ugly and not being accepted in society due to his appearance. The monster pleads for a female companion and offers to leave Frankenstein alone if he agrees to create one. Otherwise, the monster threatens to inflict more suffering on Victor. Although he knows the process will be lengthy and laborious, he agrees to prevent any more pain from the monster.

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Victor had two loving parents that gave him everything he ever needed or wanted to fulfill his physiological and emotional needs. Since Victor did not do this for his monster, the monster would kill all of Victor’s family and friends that he loved which would bring destruction to Victor’s life. For the rest of his days, Victor would go on a search for his monster to destroy it or die trying. Unlike Victor, the monster was never loved because of the way he looked. He was left alone, even by his creator, and lived a miserable life always escaping people that would “attacked [him], until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons” (Shelley).

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The monster tells Victor of his feelings when he states, “You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains…I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery.” (153) After months and months of the monster trying to connect with the world, he eventually realizes that the efforts are worthless and vows to do to his creator what his creator did to him. To make Victor isolated would give him the same curse the monster has suffered through for its entire new life. Later, the creature asks himself, “Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?” The creature easily could kill Victor if that was his desire but its real desire was to make Victor suffer as the monster did.

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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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Frankenstein is a book written by Mary Shelley about a man named Victor Frankenstein and his life and how it came to be. He had created a monster and brought it to life by studying and learning natural philosophy. Mary Shelley brought the emotions forward from the main characters by the amount of detail she put into the book. Most of the detail was brought in by the suffering that happens throughout the book caused by Frankenstein’s monster. The monster in this story is a tragic figure that is the main cause of suffering that occurs to everyone.

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When Victor abandons him, the Creature attempts to live alone and learn how others live. The people hindered his attempts with their harsh reactions and obvious fear of the Creature. He secluded himself from society and lived in the woods near a little cottage where a family lived. For a while, he stole wood and food from them until he learned their financial hardships and then he started helping them. He observed the family and began learning through them.

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He starts his own plan to for revenge against the creature, but this makes him just as beastly as the monster. Victor makes it his life goal, to make the monster pay in any way he can. He wants him to feel lonely and isolated forever. The beast takes a lot out on Victor and makes him feel exactly the way he feels

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The fictional horror novel of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is driven by the accentuation of humanity’s flaws. Even at the very mention of her work an archetypal monster fills one’s imagination, coupled with visions of a crazed scientist to boot. Opening her novel with Robert Walton, the conduit of the story, he also serves as a character to parallel the protagonist’s in many ways. As the ‘protagonist’ of the story, Victor Frankenstein, takes on the mantle of the deluded scientist, his nameless creation becomes the embodiment of a truly abandoned child – one left to fend for itself against the harsh reality posed by society. On the other hand, Walton also serves as a foil to Victor – he is not compulsive enough to risk what would be almost

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Frankenstein and his monster begin with opposite lives: Frankenstein has everything and the monster has nothing. However, in creating the monster, Frankenstein’s life and feelings begin to parallel that of the monster’s life. Frankenstein is incredibly intelligent with a fascination for science, but ultimately his thirst for knowledge leads to his undoing. Similarly the monster is determined to understand the society around him. But once he does, he understands that he will never be able to find companionship, which leads him to pain and anger.

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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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Isolation and a lack of companionship is the tragic reality for the monster, who was abandoned by his creator and is repulsive to everyone that he comes across. Victor removes himself from society for many months; severing nearly all human contact then renouncing his creation based on the monster's appearance. As the monster matures he begins to understands the relationship the cottagers share with one another, while the monster, “yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures: to see their sweet looks directed towards me with affection was the utmost limit of my ambition. ”(Shelley). Armed with nothing but the longing for a real connection, the monster approaches his unknowing hosts only to be “brutally attacked—by those he trusted...because of their human ignorance.

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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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