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Mary shelley's frankenstein themes
Romanticism in the Frankenstein novel by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein novel themes
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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is an amazing story of a monster and a man. The main characters in the book are the monster and Victor, the creator of the monster. Victor Frankenstein is a scientist who was interested in bringing a body back to life from the dead. Therefore, he gathered all the parts of the human body to do this. Then one night he brought back this body back to life. That body was further known as the monster. Soon after it was created Victor leaves the monster to raise itself, and it becomes very ill-mannered. Further in the story, Victor’s brother gets murdered. People who also died in the story were: Victor’s father, family friend Justine, later wife Elizabeth, best friend Henry. However, even though the monster killed them all, he is not the main villain. In fact, Victor is ultimately responsible for all of these deaths. When Victor abandoned the monster to raise himself, the monster was angry and upset. The first memory for the monster was it being denied by the one person, Victor, who was supposed to care for him. Therefore, the monster wandered off and started to watch people in order to teach itself how to do things, like: eating, drinking, using the bathroom, knowing right from wrong, and knowing good from bad. …show more content…
The monster wants a female companion. He says if Victor makes him one he will leave forever and never come back. The monster just wants the love and affection that he never got from Victor or anyone else. This would give Victor an out to prevent the monster from killing anyone else. Therefore he says he will make him a companion. Later he goes back on his word though and destroys his female creation before bringing it to life. Victor believes giving him a companion would be bad for the world. This infuriates the monster a lot. The monster then almost threatens Victor; he says that he will be there on Victor’s wedding night,
With nobody to reason with, Victor makes senseless decisions while he is alone. Victor begins this with his process of creating the monster. Nobody in the right mind would ever dig up graves, but that is just what victor goes and does. Once this creation is finally given life, which Victor has spent two years striving for, Victor foolishly abandons it. Victor comes to his senses to some degree after he brings life to the monster as he states, “‘now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream had vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 43). Had there been companions around Victor during this creation time, perhaps someone would have been able to guide Victor away from creating the “wretch” (Shelley 43) he so hopelessly conceived. As for the monster, he makes fairly good decisions even without guidance from anyone, including Victor, his creator. The monster has the desire to learn and gain knowledge as a genuine individual. As the monster is continuously rejected and shunned by mankind, his natural benevolence turns to malevolence. In his loneliness, the monster wrongly decides to declare “‘everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery’” (Shelley 126). Say the monster was able to have comrades of some kind around him, he would not have turned to this
The monster of the novel is often misattributed with the name, “Frankenstein.” However, Victor Frankenstein can ultimately be considered the true monster of this tale. His obsession would lead to the corruption of his soul and the creation of two monsters—one himself, and the other, the creature. In attempting to take on the role of God, nature would become a monster to Victor and destroy his life. These elements of monstrosity in Frankenstein drive the meaning of its story.
After Victor destroys his work on the female monster meant to ease the monster's solitude, the monster is overcome with suffering and sadness. These feelings affected his state of mind and caused him to do wrong things. He did not deserve to see his one and only mate be destroyed.
At first glance, the monster in Frankenstein is a symbol of evil, whose only desire is to ruin lives. He has been called "A creature that wreaks havoc by destroying innocent lives often without remorse. He can be viewed as the antagonist, the element Victor must overcome to restore balance and tranquility to the world." But after the novel is looked at on different levels, one becomes aware that the creature wasn't responsible for his actions, and was just a victim of circumstance. The real villain of Frankenstein isn't the creature, but rather his creator, Victor.
Throughout history society has shown that it is hard to accept responsibility for actions taken by individuals or by society as a whole, for example, the way America likes to cover its harsh backstory involving slavery or Germany and how it supported Adolf Hitler. But it has also been seen that to embrace these mistakes to demonstrate that society is truly mature. In the story Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly, Victor is relentlessly unwilling to accept fault for the death of his family by the creature and therefore does not show that he is truly mature. This is shown by his desire to push the creature away, his unwillingness to tell his family about it, and
It is not so easily seen that the two share a human instinct that is the need for love. This parallel is drawn from Victor and the monster through their feelings of desperation in their search for love and how they feel greatly misunderstood. Victor has been provided with the opportunity for love, yet puts himself in an isolated state, which ultimately leads to his downfall. “I, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavouring to bestow mutual pleasure, I was now alone.” (32) Through Victor rejecting love and creating a self-imposed seclusion, he does not treat the creature with care once it is brought to life\. Victor had once known what it is like to be cared for, although the monster never once feels what it is like to be loved. “I am alone and miserable: man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.” (129) Victors loneliness was put upon himself, similarly, the monster’s loneliness was also due to Victor through his neglect. The monster is craving that sense of security brought by a family who will show him love while Victor is leaving his. These two situations are contradictory, but it is what brings them to their
When the Creature came to life, Victor was astounded and terrified and ran from the Creature to promptly fever faint for a few months “His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed down the stairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited...” (58). The Creature was impacted by this because, Victor, the first person he saw after being created, ran from him in fear. Victor, who should have been a father figure for the creature, left him to fend for himself. Thus began the Creature’s loathing of Victor
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and the monster that he creates are very similar. For example, Victor creates the monster to be like himself. Another similarity is that the anger of both Victor and the monster is brought about by society. One more parallel between Victor and the monster is that they both became recluses. These traits that Victor and the monster possess show that they are very similar.
There is a monster inside of everyone! Now I’m going to talk about some similarities between Victor and the Monster. What do they have in common? They both play the role of “God.” They both feel loss and loneliness, they are both without their families they’re so sad and want a family so bad. The monster had a strong interest in finding a female that shared his qualities. He begged Victor to create a mate for him so that he would be able to live happily like other people. They are both obsessive about revenge. They both could be considered as monsters, Victor went against nature so therefore, he could definitely be a monster. Wouldn’t you imagine so? I would think so anyways… They are both abandoned
With great power comes even greater responsibility. Those who either have the intelligence or physical capability to be great must be able to manage their flair, otherwise their actions can go awry. In the story Frankenstein the author, Mary Shelley, uses Victor Frankenstein's character to display the consequences of being irresponsible for one’s actions. Frankenstein’s cowardliness is ignited by his family’s expectation of perfection, sudden reality, and his ignorance that he is the true monster, rather than his creation. Even though Frankenstein creates the creature, society and the creature himself contribute to the multiple deaths that happen in the novel.
Victor has a lack of respect for the natural world that leads him on the path to becoming a monster. In creating the monster Victor is trying to change the natural world. He is trying to play the role of god by creating life.
In chapter 17-19 of the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein creates a creature and is now having a mental argument of whether he should create a female companion for the creature or not. Victor’s reasons for not creating a companion are if he does create a companion, the creature will have someone to help him destroy the world. For the creature already showed evil in him. For example is he killed Victor’s little brother William Frankenstein. Another reason for not creating a companion is Victor knows the creature has the power to kill all mankind, and if he creates another one like him, destroying the world will be too easy. Victor’s reasons for creating a companion are the creature does not want to be alone, and unlove.
...e seeking help and strength to take care of problems in their lives. Victor Frankenstein is a man with a loving and caring family. Family and friends are an important part of his life. He has his whole life in front of him, when creates his monster. He creates the monster in the likeness of man with same need of love and affection as man. Although, this is his creation, he lets the monster down and does not care for him. The monster begins to feel neglected and lonely and wants desperately to have a human relationship. The monster turns angry and revengeful because he is so sad and abandoned. He wants Victor to feel the way that he does, all alone. The monster succeeds and Victor ends up losing all the important in his life and his own life. In the end, the monster dies and the need for human relationship becomes the destruction for both the monster and Victor.
Victor Frankenstein was the creator of the monster in the book. He was an ambitious man who had high hopes and dreams for himself, but this characteristic was the cause of his downfall. He had a ruthless desire to obtain forbidden knowledge- a knowledge that only God was worthy of having. This lead him to lock himself in his laboratory, disregarding his family, friends, and health. His one purpose was to create life. In his quest to create a human being and bestow the power of life, Victor eventually did create a creature, but this lead to a situation
In Frankenstein, Shelley creates two very complex characters. They embody the moral dilemmas that arise from the corruption and disturbance of the natural order of the world. When Victor Frankenstein is attending school, he becomes infatuated with creating a living being and starts stealing body parts from morgues around the university. After many months of hard work, he finishes one stormy night bringing his creation to life. However, “now that [Victor] had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart” (Chambers). Right after Victor realizes what he has done, he falls into deep depression and must be nursed back to health by his friend. Victor spends the rest of the story facing consequences and moral problems from creating unnatural life. When he realizes that the ‘monster’ has killed his brother, even though no one believes him, he feels responsible for his brother’s murder because he was responsible for the existence of the ‘monster’. Also feeling responsible, Victor...