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To What Extent Is Frankenstein A Tragic Hero

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Selfish Scientist or Tragic Hero?
(Frankenstein as a hero, the modern Prometheus)

Lying on a bed in the dark of a ship, dying of exposure, driven to the brink of insanity, this is not what is typically pictured for the death of a hero. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein provides us with a protagonist in just this position. Victor Frankenstein is a scientist who has unlocked the key to bringing life to inanimate objects; in doing so Frankenstein has created a monster he is ashamed and afraid of. This rejection by Frankenstein and all of society drives the monster to anger and it begins to kill those close to Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein then decides to track the monster down and kill it, ultimately this is what leads to his death. Mary Shelley’s …show more content…

With a love for knowledge in the field of science Victor is constantly looking into the secrets of the earth. Before his departure to college his sister contracts scarlet fever, their mother also catches it tending to Elizabeth and ends up dying. Driven by this tragedy Victor strives to unlock the secrets of death and life. He wants to improve the science field for future generations, he says, “I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success.” Frankenstein is simply an eager young scientist trying to leave his mark. However, his initially pure motives eventually are tainted. A tragic hero has a character flaw that leads to their downfall; this same selfish flaw seperates him from Prometheus.. When Frankenstein attains the knowledge to create life he has crossed a dangerous boundary. Originally pure intentions to do good in the world are now turned into a need to do that which has never been done and take the places of God. Victor admits that he has, “trod heaven in his thoughts.” Once the monster is created and begins its rampage. Frankenstein decides the monster must be destroyed and thus begins his ultimately end all journey to fix his

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A major clue to the course of Frankenstein’s journey is revealed when he states that “..the first misfortune of my life occurred-an omen,as it were, of my future misery.” (18) This foreshadows the tragedies Victor will face for viewing life and death as insignificant. In the beginning chapters the reader is introduced to Victor and his great plans to create life.

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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the story of a young man named Victor Frankenstein who does the unthinkable, creates life from dead flesh. Victor is a young, educated and wealthy member of society who grows up in a loving home with high standards of ethics and morality. He creates a creature out of impulse with little thought of its future well-being and abandons it carelessly. The creature is left to discover life without teaching or direction. Only when the creature impacts Victor’s life, by taking away his loved ones, is Victor forced to deal with the consequences of his own actions.

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Both characters experience trying circumstances that hasten their descent into darkness. Victor Frankenstein is motivated by his insatiable curiosity and desire to push science's boundaries, but his isolation from society and inability to deal with the effects of his creation ultimately lead to his tragic demise. He is troubled by the horrifying creature he has created and struggles with the moral ramifications of his actions. Similar to how Macbeth begins as a brave and obedient soldier, his meeting with the witches and Lady Macbeth's influence set off a chain of events that eventually drive him to murder and spiral into madness. Readers may identify with the difficult conditions that both characters find themselves in, even if they may not agree with their conduct, because of the pressures and circumstances that both characters must deal with on the

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In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, the audience views the monster as the most sympathetic character as Shelley utilizes a basic understanding of human nature in order to emphasize the innocence of the monster and force the reader into siding with the underdog. Additionally, Shelley furthers her position on why the monster is the most sympathetic by alluding to and referencing John Milton’s Paradise Lost as well as the relationship between God and man. Through this, Shelley forces the reader to abandon the conventional narrative that the monster is evil simply because he inflicted death upon others by looking at the motives that drove their actions. Shelley’s novel follows the life of Victor Franikenstein, an aspiring scientist who is fascinated

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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.

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This is not the qualities of a hero. Causing the destruction and harm instead of stopping it. Richard Cronin states, “Victor, however, grows up a little indulged and perhaps because of this, he is selfish.” Frankenstein clearly didn’t think about others when he created this monster. He had selfish wants to explore science and created something he couldn’t

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a novel about a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who brings life to the dead. The outcome of the reanimation causes many problems for the scientist who has to take matters into his own hands. Due to his selfish, cowardly, and arrogant actions, readers can conclude that Victor Frankenstein is the monster of the story. Straightaway the readers see Victor’s selfishness when his mother dies and he leaves his family to grieve by themselves, but a more prominent example is when his creation comes to life. When Frankenstein sees the creation for the first time he is horrified and “...rushed out the room, and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber” (Shelley 35).

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In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the main protagonist, Victor Frankenstein made mistakes that led him into situations of despair. After creating a vicious monster that is set out to avenge his creators poorly made decisions, Victor learns things and looses people. Throughout the novel, Victor suffers adequately and is responsible for the consequences, but he has the chance to change his fate several times. The first painful event that Victor endures is losing his mother to scarlet fever after she tends to his younger sister Elizabeth.

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Frankenstein realizes the monstrosity that he calls his own face looking into a mirror which blinds society of his kind and gentle nature. This causes the conflict in the story against his own creator Victor. This revenge built up into Frankenstein causes this monster to kill

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Victor Frankenstein went to university to further his education in the science of natural philosophy but he did not know at that point all he was capable of. He found a curiosity in life and death. He found a way to make a person from scratch like God. He was able to create life but the life he created did not turn out the way he thought it would. The

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In the 1818 edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, we follow the story of a scientist, Victor, who creates a being from the body parts of dead animals and humans. Victor learns that playing God comes with consequences when the creature comes to life and is not what he imagined it to be. We as the readers learn how the power of uninterrupted knowledge can corrupt a person and how neglect can lead someone to commit unfathomable crimes. Mary Shelley tests her audience’s morality and lets them decide whom they think deserves pity and who they think is to blame for the destruction that takes place in her book.

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Duality is shown in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, a gothic tale of a scientist whom looks to advance the life-giving qualities of mother nature. Through this novel, Shelley proves that good and evil in human nature is not always simple to define, and that everyone has both of these qualities within them. The duality of human nature is shown through the characters of Victor Frankenstein and his monster, who are both heroes in the novel while simultaneously displaying anti-hero qualities. Shelley forces the reader to sympathize with them both but also creates gruesome ideas of the two. Frankenstein’s creature places himself in a submissive position when he begs his creator to have mercy on him and asking the creator to “create a female for [him] with whom [he] can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for [his] being.”

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When Frankenstein goes to the university in Ingolstadt, he becomes fascinated with the “secret of life”. He then proceeds to build a gruesome monster and bring it to life. The monster ultimately sets out to ruin Frankenstein’s life, killing his best friend, brother, wife, and two other innocent people. This leaves Victor psychologically scarred and torn apart, but he is unable to tell anyone about the horrible monster he created. He becomes a loner, cutting himself entirely off from the world, and obsessed with making up for the damage the monster created.

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The monster wants to make someone else miserable because of all the hurt he feels. When the monster killed Frankenstein’s wife, after killing a lot of other people he cared for, Victor was sick and miserable. He died a lonely, bitter man just like the monster. Victor says, “ Alas! The strength I relied on is gone; I feel that I shall die soon, and he, my enemy and persecutor, may still be in being.

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Marry Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ or ‘The Modern Prometheus’, largely resembles the Greek myth, where the subject makes severe mistakes, attempting to play god, as he disregards the ethics of humanity, as well as his own moral. Victor Frankenstein, who is the ‘Modern Prometheus’ in Mary Shelley’s novel, attempt to do the impossible – create life! While the Greek Prometheus (a titan), commits three sins against Zeus, one of them being the giving of fire to humans. Both are in their own way absurd, however in both cases, they succeed. However both are subjected to either pain or suffering, whether it is physical or mental, after realizing what they have done.

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