Examples Of Guilt In Frankenstein
In the novel "Frankenstein" the moral conscience of the main character Victor Frankenstein can be questioned several times. In several instances Victor Frankenstein puts his loved one's lives in danger throughout the entire novel. Also Victor Frankenstein sometimes feels little or no remorse from his actions that harm the people close to him. Victor Frankenstein never fully realizes that all of the horrendous events that happen to him and his loved ones stem from his creation of the monster he made at Ingolstadt. It is Victor Frankenstein's lack of a balanced moral conscience that leads to much of the tragedy in Mary Shelley's novel, "Frankenstein".
There are many who believe in the idea of fate deciding their future and therefore, they do not feel the need to take value in thinking before making decisions. However, the future is decided based on the actions of a person alone. Those actions, if done without thinking, will ultimately lead to a life of guilt. A future weighed down by relentless mental obsession with guilt and in turn social isolation is a fate sealed the moment one makes an ignorant decision. Two characters in literature that are meant to show these lasting negative repercussions of ignorant actions are Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s mariner.
In order to protect the view he holds of himself, which stems from his god complex, Victor Frankenstein uses rationalization to shelter himself from the guilt derived from his indirect involvement with the murders of William and Justine. In allowing young Justine to confess to the murder of William, though she is innocent, Frankenstein experiences conflicted emotions. Victor writes that “such a declaration [of who the true criminal was] would have been considered as the ravings of a madman,” (Shelly 86). This rationalization of not telling the truth is because of his inability to take responsibility for his actions. In the same passage, Frankenstein describes the guilt and sadness he feels as “fangs of remorse” (86).
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.
After successfully creating the monster, Frankenstein is perplexed by what he has created. Due to the monster’s annoyance with Frankenstein, he acts back against Frankenstein mostly due to his lack of parenting and responsibility. Shelley’s novel strongly connects with the act of parenting. It is clear that Victor Frankenstein did not complete his role as a parent. Due to this, it further led the monster to misbehave and feel as if he does not have a purpose in life.
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.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a classic novel that explores the consequences of cruelty, both towards oneself and others. Through the course of the story, the theme of cruelty functions as a crucial motivator and major social and political factor, driving the plot and the development of the characters. This essay will analyze how cruelty functions in the work as a whole, the impact it has on the characters, and what it reveals about the perpetrator/victim relationship. One of the most striking examples of cruelty in the novel is the treatment of the creature by his creator, Victor Frankenstein.
In the book Frankenstein by Gris Grimly the main character Victor Frankenstein goes mad and creates a monster out of human corpse parts. After the creature's first interaction with Victor, the creature becomes mad that Victor would just abandon him after he went through all that time creating him. In retaliation, the monster finds William, Victor's younger brother, and murders him. This event causes Victor to devote his life to killing the monster. The monster in Frankenstein can be considered human due to the fact that he has more human characteristics than non-human characteristics.
Victor felt this way because his creation killed his brother and put the blame on his other loved one. The other thought Victor had about suicide was, “In that hour I should die and at once satisfy and extinguish his malice. ”(Shelley 158). He wanted to live no longer because the monster threatened him and he was just done with life. “Feels very sad, down, empty or hopeless.’(NIMH).
This much is true for Victor’s failure to take responsibility for not only teaching his creation about life but also failure to take responsibility for the actions of his creation. “Frankenstein! You belong then to my enemy… you shall be my first victim” (153). Victor’s knows that he is responsible for the death of William because he abandoned his creation and made the monster learn the hard way that he would not be accepted into society. But he has no choice but to let Justine take the fall for the death of his brother because he fears being seen as a madman.
Responsibility is the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone. In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the reader finds many examples of the importance, need, and especially lack of responsibility with characters like Victor and the monster. A reader of Frankenstein sees multifarious examples of Shelley’s theme of the dangers in not taking responsibility even today in the real world. 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 we see 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. Characters in Frankenstein not taking responsibility show the reader the potential dangers of pain and death in numerous situations in the novel.
Molly Childree Fleischbein EH 102.147 Draft February 5,2018 Our world is full of monsters, some imaginary, but most are legitimate and terrifying. In his text “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)”, Jeffery Jerome Cohen examines the use of monsters in literate and cinema. Cohen makes the claim that the use of monsters, historically and presently, in forms of entertainment symbolizes more than just the fear they instill in audiences. A monster is no longer just a monster.
Victor Frankenstein caused his own misery and destruction, which is why he is to blame for what
In the novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the two main characters, Victor Frankenstein and his creature, both display a sense of moral ambiguity. Each character has committed both good and evil alike, and neither knew the consequences of what they had done. However, Victor Frankenstein is generally the morally ambiguous character by his treatment of his creation and his own imperious personality. He wanted to be able to help science by recreating life or bringing it back, but at the same time, he did not want to consider the consequences of doing so. Victor tries to prove himself as a good moral character in the relationship between his creation and himself.
In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s Monster experiences a sense of self-actualization after coming to terms with his “monster” identity. In chapter 13, after Frankenstein’s Monster learns about human history and social norms, he conducted a self-analysis of his current self. He stated, “I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome”. Moreover, when he “looked around, he saw and heard of none like [himself].
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