Sympathy in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Mary Shelley was born in 1797. She had a difficult life with many
family upsets’, miscarriages and suffered personal depression; she
died aged 53. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein firstly as a short ghost
story but it was published as a novel in 1816.
Frankenstein is a Gothic novel and it deals with two genres, Gothicism
and science fiction. Gothicism is part of the Romantic Movement that
started in the late eighteenth century. The Romantic Movement is based
on freedom of thought and expression and the belief of living in an
age of new beginnings and high possibilities. Science fiction explores
the marvels of discovery and achievement that may result from future
developments in science and technology. Mary Shelley has obviously
used the idea of new technology to create an original novel.
Frankenstein is about a young man called Victor who has a thirst for
knowledge and ambition. He discovers the secret of animating lifeless
matter and, by assembling corpses, creates a monster that vows revenge
on his creator after being rejected from society.
This essay will be looking at how Shelley inspires sympathy for the
monster. Sympathy is a feeling or an expression of pity or sorrow for
the distress of another. Shelley creates sympathy for the monster by
creating themes of alienation and prejudice towards him. She also adds
subplots of the Delacy family and the monster’s lack of childhood to
create sympathy in Frankenstein.
The theme of alienation is very prominent throughout Frankenstein.
Alienation means estrangement, which is exactly what the monster was
going through. In volume two, we are able to understand the monster’s
tale through his own eyes. This creates...
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...n Victor fails to keep
his promise we sympathise for the monster even more.
Shelley inspires sympathy for the monster because he is alienated and
unwelcome. She makes the reader feel emotionally charged and involved
with the monster’s feelings by the depth of his expression of
rejection. Shelley also uses the theme of prejudice against the
monster. This is very powerful because it brings out the reader’s own
feelings on prejudice and helps the reader to identify with the
monster. Shelley creates an unpleasant background for the monster
because she deprives him of childhood and family support. This creates
sympathy for the monster because the reader’s own childhood
experiences help empathise with him.
I think that most sympathy is inspired when the monster starts to hate
himself and realise that he will never be accepted: “a wretched
outcast I was.”
On page 81 of the novel, the monster is thinking to himself as he said, “My thoughts became more active, and I longed to discover the motive and feelings of these lovely creatures…” (Shelley 81). It is distinct in the quotation how the monster is seeing his humanistic abilities—he has feelings and he has motives. He is beginning to understand the relationships the human population has with one another and he would like to be able to experience a humanistic relationship with someone who is similar to him. The ethos in the quotation is distinct because the monster’s desolate emotion could incite and emotional response from the audience—the audience could become empathetic to his situation. On page 85 of the novel, the monster was discussing his life to date as he said, “But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me or who claimed any intercourse with me,” (Shelley 85). The monster has the knowledge of his psychical difference in comparison to the human population. The ethos in the quotation is distinct because
I have empathy for the monster because he was not created to be evil. His creator Victor D. Frankenstein and the people he encountered after he was created, were the ones who were being hateful towards him. The monster was happy and had a kind heart towards the people he met , but his kind heart and pleasant demeanor was short lived. People started talking about him in a bad way and that made the monster angry and also it made him a product of his environment. This is how he became who he was.
In her novel titled ‘Frankenstein’, Mary Shelley employs many innovative literary techniques to elicit feelings of sympathy for the monster, even though the creature’s desire for revenge may render him incapable. Are readers able to respond compassionately to the creature even though he willingly makes Victor’s life miserable by murdering those close to him?
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is filled with death and sorrow. They occur in almost every aspect of the book. The four "squares" of the book, Walter, Victor, the monster, and the cottagers, all suffer from them at one time or another. Some perceive Frankenstein as a horror story; however, in actuality it is a book of tragedy and despair. Every page reveals more misery than the page before. Thus, death and sorrow are inevitable in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
The Human Need for Love Exposed in Frankenstein Written in 1817 by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein is a novel about the "modern Prometheus", the Roman Titian who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. The story takes place in several European countries during the late 1700's. It is the recollection of Victor Frankenstein, a ship captain, about his life. Victor is a student of science and medicine who discovers a way to reanimate dead flesh. In a desire to create the perfect race he constructs a man more powerful than any normal human, but the creation is so deformed and hideous that Victor shuns it.
In most novel and movies monsters are known to be evil, committing numerous crimes against humanity and are normally the ones that we don’t sympathize with. However, this novel carefully shows the reader that monsters can be good creatures, with a decent heart and act based on the actions of others. The novel shows how the monster should be pitied, rather than criticised. Mary Shelley's “Frankenstein” manages to create sympathy for the creature through speech, actions and mistreatment the creature suffers.
Compassion and empathy are often described as human-kind's greatest quality. Yet, many things can distract or overpower our compassion to allow room for things like cruelty, selfishness, and the need for vengeance. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein has no compassion for his creation; however, his creation is born with large amounts of compassion, but Frankenstein ignores and abuses his monster. Victor’s lack of compassion towards the monster, makes the monster lose his own compassion in a need for vengeance to make his abuser feel the same pain he does.
Can you imagine losing all of your loved ones to an evil beast? Or being abandoned by everyone you came in contact with? Mary Shelley portrays numerous emotions in Frankenstein. Sympathy and hatred are two that are constantly shown throughout novel. Mary Shelley enlists sympathy and hatred towards Victor and the monster by presenting them in different viewpoints. The views of sympathy and hatred towards the main characters change as the narration changes in the novel Frankenstein.
When Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is analyzed, critics comes to a conclusion about Victor Frankenstein's creation. The creature invokes the most sympathy from the readers than any other character in the novel. Because he is abandoned by society which manipulates the creature to do evil things despite his good heart. Therefore Shelley's message throughout the novel is that a person is not born evil, they are made evil.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein depicts a powerful concept of humans following their desires versus humans’ stoicism. The Creature in the novel is initially portrayed as an innocent being only to devolve into a monster reminiscent of his creator. This fact demonstrates that men in this story are voracious and controlled by emotion, while women showed restraint in emotion and carried out duties. Despite taking on a lesser role, women are the real backbone of the novel. Mary Shelley deliberately misplaces sympathy for the Creature in Frankenstein to advocate the recognition of women’s struggles through the portrayal of their stoicism; the deprivation of logic and reason within men as the Creature
Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein centers around a creator who rejects his own creation. The plot thickens as Victor Frankenstein turns his back on his creation out of fear and regret. The monster is cast out alone to figure out the world and as a result of a life with no love, he turns evil. Shelley seems to urge the reader to try a relate with this monster and avoid just seeing him as an evil being beyond repentance. There is no doubt that the monster is in fact evil; however, the monster’s evilness stems from rejection from his creator.
The greater detail about the monster’s experiences provided by the book is the first thing that allows a reader to sympathize with the monster better than an audience member. When the Frankenstein monster is retelling the story of the hardships he has endured, he mentions events that were overlooked in the play. One example of this is when the monster saved a young girl’s life. An act such as this would be praised with the greatest heroism if it was done by a human, but as a reward he is shot, receiving only “the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone.” (Shelley 135) The book also examines the months of hard work the creature put into learning about human nature and language in order to be fully accepted when he chose to reveal himself. The monster hid by the cottage for around a year, never leaving during the day and working to help the cottager’s at night in order to learn from them. The monster went ...
middle of paper ... ... Generally in the novel, most readers tend to sympathize with Frankenstein because of the way in which he is mentally and physically harmed by his creation. However, one must also realize that while Frankenstein is a victim in the novel, he also exhibits features that make him a monster. These monstrous qualities, however, stem from his passion for science and his desire to create life. Not only does the reader criticize and pity Frankenstein, but the reader also empathizes with Frankenstein’s creation.
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is one of the literary texts interwoven in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. It talks of a story about a girl Lotte and a boy named Werther. The two fell in love although the girl was already engaged to an older man Abert. When Lotte marries the older man, Werther commits suicide because of rejection. The creature in Frankenstein finds this book and teaches himself to read from it. Shelley makes a reference to the novel The Sorrows of the Young Werther and Victor’s creature gets hold of the book and reads to practice language skills and pass time. Through this book, the creature learns a lot about feeling and emotions. The creature says "As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and condition" (Shelley 114). This shows how much the creature leant from the book because Victor created it and left it all alone without any teachings on how to speak and act like a woman.
Throughout the novel, “Frankenstein” the author, Mary Shelly, emphasizes the aspect of love. The protagonist, the monster, searches for love, however he is completely alone. The monster states, “But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses…” (Shelly 86). The monster craved companionship, therefore, the monster was seeking love.