How Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Depicts Human Reaction to Difference

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A Different Role

Let your imagination grasp if you can; walking down a bustling street, people going about their daily business then suddenly stopping without hesitation to glare. As you draw nearer the faces of the crowds gaze from horror to repulsion. The disgusted people whisper jeers to each other and all are too appalled to speak to you or ask you your name. So different from everyone else, you are ugly and have nothing by which to answer even if asked. You feel awful despair as you approach and they turn away in repulsion and feel the sting of their eyes and then the cold of their shoulders.

In Mary Shelly's novel Frankenstein, The Creature's sad fate is a representation of what it means to be different. Because of this unfortunate destiny, The Creature remains hidden and secluded. He feels the isolation forced upon him and wicked appearance.

The narrow ways of men continue to put constraints on that which is acceptable and that which is different. Similarly, the things that are repulsive, scary, hideous and vile. Humans have a constant need to categorize things they do not understand, so they attach a label to everything. The Creature's father and creator Victor Frankenstein berthed him to life with out a name. This is possibly the saddest aspect of The Creature's character. Viewed this way a perspective on humans as compassionate and caring individuals is distorted to show people as cold and inconsiderate. Attempting to define difference, humans socially segregate distinction and inconsistency.

A characteristic of humanity is social contact, each individual needs significant social interaction. Not only must humans have interaction, but must share things in common to care and love. This h...

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...t only symbolizes difference in terms of societal norms of appearance, but it emphasizes the cruelty of man. People will always isolate in order to appreciate. We as humans judge before evaluation is complete, instead of appreciating in order to evaluate. It seems to be a sad yet convincing truth, since it takes a blind man to actually see the person that The Creature truly is. People see him and then become blind to what he really is.

Differences do not come from what is truly dissimilar, but by perception of difference. Mary Shelly depicts a perfect portrait of difference at the expense The Creature. Instead of being caste in a light of discrepancy, he stays shadowed in darkness of exclusion. He is perceived as a hideous monster and that brand defines him as unusual, hideous and dissimilar to the human definition of the familiar, beautiful and similar.

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