Frankenstein struggles with the death of his mother and family throughout this work of writing. I also consider Victor a coward, for he gets afraid of reprimand, and lets Justine be wrongfully pin-pointed as the guilty, while it was his fault since, he let his uneducated Creature wander without any instruction whatsoever. The Monster, however, is contrasting. When he realizes what he has done, he regrets it deeply, and begs for a companion to share his misery. Victor, again, gets scared, and fails to keep his promise.
What is a monster? Its definition is argued upon. Some may define it as a creature like vampires or demons, but in a more figurative sense, it could be a person. In Gris Grimly’s Frankenstein, this phenomenon is heavily explored between two characters, Victor Frankenstein and a human-like creature. One day, Victor has a sudden interest in bringing dead things to life.
Throughout history, humans have grappled with an insatiable thirst for power. This temptation can blind us to the consequences of our actions, as we see in the case of Victor Frankenstein and his creation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In the beginning, Victor is a naive child with hopes of making discoveries for science. But as the novel develops, Victor's ambitions become more foolish and selfish. Victor's failed attempt to play god and obtain endless glory disrupted the delicate balance of life, leading him on a torturous path that affected him and countless others, painting him as the true villain of his story.
The monster fought for affection by trying to threaten Victor into creating a spouse for it. “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 104). This situation was the first time the beast tried to establish it’s dominance over the creator. The only reason the monster felt the need to hold power over Victor was to gain a sense of emotion and affection as it has seen other humans do.
Putting the story in a situated ironic state, because when you expect Victor and his monster to be made out as opposites, they may just be the same. One of the main key points in Frankenstein is explicitly, constantly, pointing out how lonely and isolated the monster is, and in some ways how he yearns for a family he
This caused a lot of anger for the monster, and he would then release this anger onto Victor to make him pay for abandonment. In the end Victor’s death was “caused by his creature” or really by “his own vengeful pursuit of it” (Lowe-Evans). The monsters death was through “self-immolation” because of the murders he committed to get back at Victor (Lowe- Evans). Both man and monster life was ended in cruel
But then eventually the Monster woke up, and when he woke up it had scared Victor so bad. Victor had left the house so quickly, all he felt was regret. He regretted it because all he thought about when he was making the Monster was how successful he would be, he never planned ahead to see what would happen in the future. He felt like he had failed, because he knew that if the Monster
In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, both characters: Victor Frankenstein and his creation, the creature, exhibit malicious behavior at different points in the story. However, it is ultimately Victor who can be seen as the true malicious party due to his reckless actions and disregard for the consequences of his experiments. Victor's initial motivation for creating the creature was not inherently malicious; he hoped to use science to create life and push the boundaries of what was possible. However, as he became increasingly obsessed with his work, he began to neglect his relationships and responsibilities, ultimately leading to the creation of the monster. He quickly realized the enormity of his mistake and instead of taking responsibility for his actions and trying to help the creature, he abandoned it, leaving it to fend for itself in a world where it did not belong.
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).
Life can be rough, and both Victor and the monster figure this out in specific ways. Victor begins by being a dedicated and persistent young lad who just wanted to get his name out there, but his obsession sent him into a spiraling descent into madness; however, the monster figures this out by getting abused, tormented, and treated like a megalomaniac even though all he did was be nice and helpful to everyone he came across. To make things worse, these changes impacted both characters in very bad ways personally. The transformations significantly impacted the way they lived and thought, even bringing on suicidal thinking. If the story would have been any bit different in terms of having a positive change, then the story probably would not have been as entertaining to the audience as it is currently, and in addition, Victor and the monster would have had better lives.
Victor Frankenstein is selfish. The novel portrays Victor as a selfish character who is only concerned about his own well-being. Frankenstein wanted to manipulate the power of life. He abandons his creation because of the creature’s appearance and also withholds information or lies about his creation. Due to Victor 's selfishness, readers feel sorry for his creation.
The problem Victor tried to avoid was the reproduction of the two monsters. This would leave him responsible for an entire race of monsters, holding him accountable for all disasters and misery. Victor, also, is interested in creations by himself without the help of a woman. Victor’s destruction of the female monster can be viewed as an act of anti-feminism.
In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, selfishness is a theme most prominent in the piece, and how it plagues and destroys both Frankenstein and everyone around him. Shelley describes the battles of selfishness in humans and how destructive it really can be through the narrator, Frankenstein. Shelley describes the scenes of Frankenstein in his own self-induced exile, his neglect, his loneliness, and his disgust. In multiple ways is selfishness portrayed through each and every one of the characters in the novel.
Rebecca McNutt once stated in her text Bittersweet a timeless quote: “Again we have the problem that whether you’re moral or not is a matter of whether it's cost-effective.” Humans mostly seem motivated by asking themselves a simple question, “If I do this will I get something from it?” If the answer is a yes, then many people will do what is being questioned. If it's no, we tend to leave it and carry on with our lives. The whole idea of selfishness within a novel can be used as a way to bring us to feel sympathy towards a character, or even to see them as evil.
Selfish Desires Selfishness has caused the downfall of countless characters throughout a multitude of literary works. This selfishness is also what usually precedes a character’s isolation due to the consequences of their actions. One example of this can be found in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when Victor Frankenstein defies the natural order to accomplish his personal goals. Likewise, in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Mariner makes a fatal mistake of performing a selfish action without thinking of the consequences. These works use the character’s actions and the main characters to explore how selfish decisions leads to one’s own isolation and the destruction of those around them.
