Next, Victor had to come up with a way to make the monster happy. The creatures desire throughout the book was human contact (Bond). He wanted to be accepted by the human population (Lustig). The only way the monster would be happy is if he had a companion (Shelley 135). As stated by the monster, “I demand a creature of another sex” (Shelley 135). All he wanted to leave Victor and his family alone was a female. Victor hesitated to create a female for the monster because he feared that they would destroy the world (Shelley 134). As stated by Harlan and McCoy in Hobbes view on human nature the life of a person is a competition with others. The monster and Victor are in competition because Victor wants the monster to leave him alone and the monster is in competition with Victor because all he wants is a companion and Victor will not give it to him. Due to this competition many lives were lost and in the end all that …show more content…
After everything Victor has been through now he has to be alone in this world. He has lost everyone in his family and now all he has left is the monster. He faces a lot of regret because he was the one who created the monster who killed his family. He blames himself for all their deaths. Victor stated, “ They all died by my hands” (Shelley 175). Now he is faced with living without all of them because of his creation. He realizes that the creation took over his life and that he was now the slave and the monster was the master (Shelley 210). Victor toward the end of his book accepts the grief in his dying by saying, “My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell” (Shelley 213). The only bad thing about him waiting till death to accept his wrong doings is that he never got to stand up for his family until the end when they were all already gone (Schmid). This marks the end of Victors struggles because now that his is dead he no longer struggles with science or the
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
Throughout the history of mankind, the question of what it means to be a human being has been contemplated for centuries. Numerous philosophers have read and debated this significant question and it is still reflected upon today. Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley plumbs the depth of this question with the example of a creature who is spurned by humanity despite being human in character. The discernment of creature from man is still misconstrued as shown in this tale, but its importance lies in the message Frankenstein that appearances matter very little when it comes to being human. The creature’s human qualities of its emotions, desire for companionship, and intelligence set it apart as uniquely human from simply a base and barbaric monster
Throughout the book of Frankenstein, the creator of the being Frankenstein, Victor, is experienced as a suffering being. He recalls from the very beginning a time during his childhood where he was happy and surrounded by love, a time when his mother lived. Victor’s downfall or the beginning of his disgrace, initiates with the death of his mother. Victor leaves his family to start a new stage in his life, he leaves on quest for answers a true quest for knowledge. Personal motivation will lead Victor to take on the challenge of overcoming death, or to be more specific, give life to a dead body.
Examine the Concept of Monsters and the Monstrous in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Miss Hutton “Frankenstein” has a variety of monsters and monstrous things/incidents within it, however I am jus going to focus on some main aspects of the monsters and monstrous. Shelley got the idea for “Frankenstein” whilst she was on holiday. AS well as being challenged by Lord Byron to produce a horror novel, she was also influenced death many times; she was abandoned and had a literacy upbringing. Shelley relates her story to fears which were carried by many humans at that time.
Victor, who is described as a beautiful man with no apparent flaws. He created another life and kept it a secret until the monster actually came to life. Mary Shelley knew what she was doing because she wanted to portray Victor as being a loyal and caring person. Shelley wanted us to view victor as the one who does not need to take responsibility for their actions but it all catches up with him in the end. Victor is selfish and doesn’t want to take responsibility for his actions, or his creation. Victor states, “I had desired it with and ardor that far exceeded moderation: But now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and the breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” (Shelley, Kindle) When reading this quote, you can see that he does not care anything about the monster after it has come to life. He spent all that time on it for him to judge the monster by its appearance instead of treating his creation like a child and teaching him everything he needs to know. Now all he knows is neglect and
Frankenstein could hear the loud thunder from his house during a raging storm as he’d stood at the door and watching the storm. He saw a lighting hit an oak tree that is twenty yards away from his house as the tree was on fire. After the thunder stuck the tree, there is nothing remain but the stump of the tree. This sparks Frankenstein to study science and electricity as he’d sees how lightning have the power of destruction. Shelley indicates that Victor utilizes his proficiency from the science books and electricity to make the monster similar to using a machine that uses electricity by doctor to press against the heart to make it beat again and allow the person to live. Shelley makes Frankenstein's curiosity explicit that the reader can derive
In Frankenstein, Victor’s monster suffers much loneliness and pain at the hands of every human he meets, as he tries to be human like them. First, he is abandoned by his creator, the one person that should have accepted, helped, and guided him through the confusing world he found himself in. Next, he is shunned wherever he goes, often attacked and injured. Still, throughout these trials, the creature remains hopeful that he can eventually be accepted, and entertains virtuous and moral thoughts. However, when the creature takes another crushing blow, as a family he had thought to be very noble and honorable abandons him as well, his hopes are dashed. The monster then takes revenge on Victor, killing many of his loved ones, and on the humans who have hurt him. While exacting his revenge, the monster often feels guilty for his actions and tries to be better, but is then angered and provoked into committing more wrongdoings, feeling self-pity all the while. Finally, after Victor’s death, the monster returns to mourn the death of his creator, a death he directly caused, and speaks about his misery and shame. During his soliloquy, the monster shows that he has become a human being because he suffers from an inner conflict, in his case, between guilt and a need for sympathy and pity, as all humans do.
Society is a concept found in all aspects of life; it is a slant which is impossible to avoid. For instance; sadly in life society labels things or people as good or bad, poor or rich, ugly or pretty. The literary piece of the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley clearly reflects this act of society in which they classify all things. The novel reflects how society labels everything; by being judgmental from the way the family is seen, how people view Frankenstein as a monster, and how the monster is affected, his conduct gets altered by all of society judgmental actions.
When Victor died, the monster wept over his body. “‘But soon,’ he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, ‘I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct,’” (277). This quote from the monster exhibits the void he felt after Victor died. The realization that his creator is dead becomes too much to bear for him, so he proclaims that he will die. This is symbolic to Mary Shelley’s real life.
In the novel "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, the relationship of external apperence and internal feelings are directly related. The creature is created and he is innocent, though he is seaverly deformed. His nature is to be good and kind, but society only views his external appereance which is grotesque. Human nature is to judge by external apperence. He is automatically ostracized and labeled as a monster because of his external apperence. He finnaly realized that no matter how elequintly he speaks and how kind he is, people will never be able to see past his external deformities. Children are fearful of him, Adults think he is dangerous, and his own creator abandons him in disgust. The creature is treated as a monster, therefore he begins to internalize societies view of him and act the like a monster.
Because of Victor’s need for fame and desire for power leads to Victor becoming a monster. Victor begins his quest to bring life to a dead person because he does not want anyone to feel the pain of a loved ones death. At first he is not obsessed with his project. As he moves along in the project he thinks about what will happen to him. "Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source, many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me." (Shelley 39) He realizes that he will become famous if he accomplishes the task of bringing a person back to life. The realization that he will become famous turns him into an obsessive monster. He wanted to be admired, and praised as a species creator. He isolates himself from his family and works on the creature. “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation, but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” (Shelley 156) By spending most of his time inside on his experiment, he has no time to write or contact his family. He puts fear within his family because they fear for him.
Romantic writer Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein does indeed do a lot more than simply tell story, and in this case, horrify and frighten the reader. Through her careful and deliberate construction of characters as representations of certain dominant beliefs, Shelley supports a value system and way of life that challenges those that prevailed in the late eighteenth century during the ‘Age of Reason’. Thus the novel can be said to be challenging prevailant ideologies, of which the dominant society was constructed, and endorsing many of the alternative views and thoughts of the society. Shelley can be said to be influenced by her mothers early feminist views, her father’s radical challenges to society’s structure and her own, and indeed her husband’s views as Romantics. By considering these vital influences on the text, we can see that in Shelley’s construction of the meaning in Frankenstein she encourages a life led as a challenge to dominant views.
“.he declares 'everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me, and sent me forth to this insupportable misery” (Bond). The monster is angry with Victor. He wants Victor to build him a companion, or he will kill everyone that Victor loves. After Victor rejects the idea, the monster wants Victor to feel the loneliness and isolation that the monster has felt all his life. “.if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly towards you, my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred” (Shelley, 204).
Sometimes, in novels like Frankenstein, the motives of the author are unclear. It is clear however, that one of the many themes Mary Shelley presents is the humanity of Victor Frankenstein's creation. Although she presents evidence in both support and opposition to the creation's humanity, it is apparent that this being is indeed human. His humanity is not only witnessed in his physical being, but in his intellectual and emotional thoughts as well. His humanity is argued by the fact that being human does not mean coming from a specific genetic chain and having family to relate to, but to embrace many of the distinct traits that set humans apart from other animals in this world. In fact, calling Victor's creation a `monster' doesn't support the argument that he is human, so for the sake of this case, his name shall be Phil.
After Frankenstein discovered the source of human life, he became wholly absorbed in his experimental creation of a human being. Victor's unlimited ambition, his desire to succeed in his efforts to create life, led him to find devastation and misery. "...now that I have finished, the beauty of the dream had vanished..." (Shelley 51). Victor's ambition blinded him to see the real dangers of his project. This is because ambition is like a madness, which blinds one self to see the dangers of his actions. The monster after realizing what a horror he was demanded that victor create him a partner. "I now also began to collect the materials necessary for my new creation, and this was like torture..." (Shelley 169). Victor's raw ambition, his search for glory, has left him. His eyes have been opened to see his horrible actions, and what have and could become of his creations. As a result, Victor has realized that he is creating a monster, which could lead to the downfall of mankind. His choice is simple, save his own life or save man.