The Theme Of Mistreatment In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
The first major aspect that leads to the Creature’s fall from grace is appearance. Victor works tirelessly in academia because he believes to have found the solution to generate life. Once Victor succeeds, the Creature’s demonic appearance mortifies him. Victor describes his work with disdaining imagery, stating, “I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motivation, it became a thing such as even Dante could have conceived" (Shelley 36). Although Victor successfully creates what would be his greatest academic achievement, he abandons his creation, showing that the Creature's ugliness is a prevailing factor for his isolation from civilization.
Throughout this novel, we learn the views of the creature that Victor Frankenstein created. His views on society, justice, and injustice. When he is first created, he seeks to be accepted by society despite his appearance. However, the events he experiences shape his views. Victor Frankenstein, the DeLacey family, and the father and daughter he meets throughout his journey do not accept him.
Victor would stop at nothing to finish his project and became so obsessed that he was isolated from his family and friends. His way of collecting lifeless matter for his creation is unethical and morally wrong. Eventually, he is punished for his actions: “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body.” (pg.56) Additionally, extreme devotion to the building of his creation caused Victor mental distress due to the fact that he neglected his own needs in order to work exclusively on the creature: “I had deprived myself of rest and health.”
The novel Frankenstein brings to light many problems and situations that shed light on the faults of mankind. Cruelty was a huge factor in the novel; throughout Frankenstein is cruel to his body and to his creation. When he first makes the creature he runs from it, leaving the creature to fend for himself; even when reuniting with the creature he continues displays cruelty. The creature, in turn exhibits Victor cruelty right back. Within Frankenstein cruelty can be attributed, often affecting both Victor and the creature; serving as a crucial motivator and revealing their anger, pain, frustration till eventually both die.
The Dangers Of Responsibility Responsibility is the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone. Responsibility is something that every human needs. A lack of responsibility can be harmful to the person and the people around them and a plethora of responsibility can change a person 's life. In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Shelley’s portrayal of Victor as selfish suggests that not taking responsibility can lead to pain, death, and the suffering of others as the reader sees in the novel which relates to today 's society of powerful countries not taking responsibility for the weapons that they create, and the damage that is revealed as a result.
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.
The Duties a Parent Has Towards Their Children What gives humans the right to create life? Moreover, what responsibilities does a parent have to his child. Multiple philosophies have been formulated that address this question; communism and Christianity being two of the most prominent in the western modern world. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses Frankenstein’s monster to convey her belief that a parent's most basic duty to their child is to be present in their live while caring and nurture them. She does this through a multitude of literary devices.
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.
Joyce Carol Oates states in her essay Frankenstein Fallen Angel, “…he (Victor) seems blind to the fact that is apparent to any reader – that he has loosed a fearful power into the world, whether it strikes his eye as aesthetically pleasing or not, and he must take responsibility for it.” Victor is unwilling to care for the creature, because he finds him dreadful, so he takes the easy way out and leaves the creature to take care of himself, which he is not capable of doing. Victor’s obsession to act superhuman blinded him while he was creating the creature because he had a desire to assemble the creature from makeshift parts so that the creature would be hideous and therefore inferior to Victor. The creature is formed as an ugly being so that it is easier for Victor to walk away from. Victor is willing to abandon his own creation because he views the creature as a, “… filthy mass that moved and talked” (136).
Knowledge, the driving force behind Victor’s experiment, caused the creation of the Creature and set the course for the rest of the plot. The Creature desires the power of knowledge in his own life. When he flees after Victor abandons him, he does not know anything about society, the world, or how people interact. He tries to gain this knowledge by observing others from a distance. Eventually, he starts to learn and teaches himself many
An eye for an eye or the law of retaliation is the principle most people live their lives by. For the characters in Frankenstein, this concept is apparent as the main character, Victor, creates a monster and instantly abandons him which sets off the chain of events revolving around revenge. However, as Gandhi once stated, “an eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind” (Gandhi). Throughout the novel, the creature and Victor engage in a recurring cycle of vengeance, but these acts of revenge are bittersweet as in the end it destroys both of them. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley reveals how revenge consumes and destroys those who surrender to it.
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.
The creature becomes defensive. "Life...is dear to me, and I will defend it" (Shelley 96), this is ironic because not only does the creature kill others showing his selfishness, which he is mirroring Victor 's earlier selfish intentions for creating the creature, but earlier he was suicidal. Now the creature has to ask permission for a better life from a person that doesn 't even seem to value it. The creature also reminds
The gothic fiction novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley centralizes on humanity and the qualifications that make someone human. The content of the novel Frankenstein depicts a monster displaying human traits that his creator Victor does not possess: empathy, a need for companionship, and a will to learn and fit in. Throughout the novel Shelley emphasizes empathy as a critical humanistic trait. The monster displays his ability to empathize with people even though they are strangers. On the other hand Victor, fails to show empathy throughout the novel even when it relates to his own family and friends.
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.
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