Compassion
Sometimes in novels like Frankenstein, the motives of the author are unclear. Mary Shelley presents 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. The creature’s humanity is not only witnessed in his physical being, but in his intellectual and emotional thoughts as well. From the novel, some people think that Frankenstein’s 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 species in this world. In fact, Frankenstein creation does not support
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For instance, if one person is despondent other will do anything to make ones pleased. Everyone deserves compassion, and that no one should be the judge to whether the other person actually deserve it or not, but in general, some individual do not always feel the need to extend their compassion to others, in most cases because they do not think the others deserve it, or it’s because some people do not feel as though they are able to afford to help in any way possible. For example, there are people who naturally have sympathy to one another, but in some cases some people just have sympathy for interest. Some people help the needed one for interest to show the world their good actions, but in reality they are people who are just showing their compassion for interest or benefit. Compassion is someone who is willing to help the needless, who is always there for them in the hard times. “However, compassion is defined as the emotional response when perceiving suffering and involves an authentic desire to help alleviate that suffering” (Seppala). The compassion of a human is portrayed through actions, emotions, and most importantly love …show more content…
I will not hear you. There can be no communicate between you and me; we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in which one must fall” (68). At this point in the novel, I sympathize with the monster even though he has become a terrible person. As his creator, Victor Frankenstein should have cared for the monster despite his disgusting appearance, but Victor ran away from his responsibilities toward creature, he did not give the creature what he wanted in his life, because he was feared of being killed by the creature. Frankenstein made the creature to murder the living humans, because the creature was very isolated and he did not had no one to talk to:” I was benevolent; my soul glow with love and humanity: but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing?” (68). If Frankenstein would have guided and nurtured the creature then the creature would have never sought revenge on Frankenstein and his family: I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend” (68). The creature demonstrated his true personality, due to the abandonation of his creator. However, the creature perceive Frankenstein of being the omnipotent God: “Remember, that I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou divest from joy for no misdeed” (68). Which demonstrates the melancholy part of the creature that was filled with loneliness and
As Frankenstein is enroute to his pursuit of gaining more knowledge, he states, “I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed” (Shelley 41). Frankenstein’s decision in allowing his intellectual ambitions to overpower everything else in his life leads him to be blinded to the dangers of creating life. He isolates himself from his society when creating the monster, letting himself be immersed in his creation while being driven by his passions, allowing nobody to be near him. The fact that he allows this creation of a monster to consume his total being reveals how blinded he is to the immorality of stepping outside the boundaries of science and defying nature. His goal in striving to achieve what wants to in placing man over nature makes him lose his sense of self as all he is focused on is the final product of his creation. He starts to realize his own faults as after he has created the monster, he becomes very ill and states, “The form of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was forever before my eyes, and I raved incessantly concerning him” (48). His impulsive decision to make the monster leads him to abhorring it as it does not turn out to be what he has expected. Because he chooses to isolate himself in creating the
In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley highlights on the experiences her characters undergo through the internal war of passion and responsibility. Victor Frankenstein lets his eagerness of knowledge and creating life get so out of hand that he fails to realize what the outcome of such a creature would affect humankind. Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, highlights on how Frankenstein’s passion of knowledge is what ultimately causes the decline of his health and the death of him and his loved ones.
Virtue is found at the margins of society more often than at its center. In Frankenstein, the novel by Mary Shelley, the monster exemplifies virtue to a greater extent than his creator, Victor Frankenstein. Shelley's creature is an isolate of great sensitivity, kindness, and insight. Contrary to James Whale's 1931 film, Frankenstein, which portrays the creature as a lumbering dolt, Shelley's monster was modeled on Rousseau's notion of humanity as the "noble savage". The nobility of the creature is evident as encounters a simple French family and observes and draws form the quirks of humanity.
Victor Frankenstein may be the leading character in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but a hero he is not. He is self-centered and loveless, and there is nothing heroic about him. There is a scene in Chapter twenty-four where Captain Walton is confronted by his crew to turn southwards and return home should the ice break apart and allow them the way. Frankenstein rouses himself and finds the strength to argue to the Captain that they should continue northwards, or suffer returning home "with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows." He quite obviously has alterior motives and if he were not the eloquent, manipulative creature he so egotistically accuses his creature of being, he might not have moved the Captain and the men so much that they are blind to the true source of his passion. Unfortunately for Frankenstein, the crew, (however "moved") stand firm in their position. Yet the things he says in his motivational speech are prime examples of the extent to which Frankenstein is blind to his own faults and yet will jump at the chance to harangue others. He is so self-centered that his lack of interaction and love for others after his experiment has been completed, would barely qualify him as a person, if the difference between being human and being a person lies in the ability to have relationships with others.
The creature was created with the intention of goodness and purity but because of this, he wasn’t equipped to deal with the rejection of his creator. After Victor Frankenstein’s death, Robert Walton walks in to see the creature standing over his friend’s lifeless body.
The creature displays his hatred toward Frankenstein for leaving him immediately and not providing guidance and protection in this harsh, new world by murdering his family and friends. While seeking his creator, the creature first murders Victor Frankenstein’s youngest brother William and exclaims, “I too can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him” (Shelley 144). The creature wishes for Victor Frankenstein to suffer taking his own companions away, forcing him to be miserable as well by destroying his personal relationships with others by murdering loved ones. Through the rejection of the creature because of his physical appearance, he learns what is accepted as well as how you can treat another being as he succumbs to his anger and proceeds with his crimes. The creature tells Frankenstein, “your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish your happiness forever.
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?
In the first chapters of the book, Shelley describes a scientist who was obsessed with "doing something great" for mankind. Victor Frankenstein, an educated man of science, was completely involved with his work, which happened to be the creation of another living being with human qualities. Once Victor’s work was finally completed, he realized that he had created a “monster”, and he was terrified. Mary Shelley, supporting Rousseau's theory, definitely believed that people are born essentially with good intentions and feelings, and she shows this from the first few moments of the creature’s life. When Victor was lying terrified in his bed, the creature came i...
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.
Frankenstein only takes action against it after his last family member has been killed by it because he cannot get accompany from his family anymore, which shows that he cares about himself more than the lives of other people. When the creature kills Dr. Frankenstein’s brother, his good friend Henry and his wife Elizabeth, he does not want to revenge because he still has his father to live for. However, after his father died by hearing the death of Elizabeth, he lost all his social interaction so he is alone and miserable. Before the monster’s depredations, he can depend on his family when he was sick or depressed; but now he is close to the state of solitude that the creature has experienced since being created. Therefore, Dr. Frankenstein becomes dehumanized and obsess with revenge. He could only feel his pain after all his family died, but never think of the creature’s desperation. The creature, with no bindings and no belongings, is on its own the whole life. As its creator, Dr. Frankenstein gives no love to it, but leave it cruelly. He could never understand why the creature take revenge on him because he is a narcissist. In the article, “Narcissism and Empathy in Young Offenders and Non-offenders”, author Erica G. Hepper explains that, “Although narcissistic individuals depend on other people’s praise and respect to feed their ego, they lack communal motivation and fail to consider the effect they have on others” (201). Dr. Frankenstein never care to think of what might happen to the creature after he rejects it. What he cares is he could not bear to look at the creature, so he just runs away. And now, Dr. Frankenstein decides to take revenge on the creature that all its miseries are caused by himself. Surprisingly, after Dr. Frankenstein died, the creature comments him by his bed, “Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me” (146)? Even though the creature
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.
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.
The creature’s moral ambiguity characteristic was a vile ingredient to the construction of this novel Frankenstein because it made the reader 's sympathies with him even after the audience knows he had committed murder because the readers had seen the truth this creature had to face. That he had tried everything within his power to peacefully live with them, to interact, communicate, and befriend them “these thoughts exhilarated me and led me to apply with fresh ardour to the acquiring the art of language”, that even though he was seen as a monster because of the looks he was created with, something he had no control over, he still had hope to be seen as equals, ”My organs were indeed harsh, but supple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their tones, yet I pronounced such words as I understood with tolerable ease. It was as the ass and the lap-dog; yet surely the gentle ass whose intentions were affectionate, although his manners were rude, deserved better treatment than blows and execration;” this hope of his was utterly crushed, and can only set him up for utter disappointment(12.18). Because in the end he only received hates, scorns, violence, and prejudice from his good will. So in the end of the story, Mary Shelley’s forces the readers to see within the creature’s heart and for
What is compassion? It has two components. One component of compassion means to put yourself in another person’s shoes, and ask yourself, What if I were that person? How would I feel? So, compassion means to develop an awareness of the suffering in another person. Another component of compassion is self-compassion, having compassion doesn’t always have to be putting everyone else before you, sometimes compassion can mean putting yourself first. Throughout generations, compassion has played an important role in many people, it’s a natural instinct within all of us. We show compassion towards our loved ones, when confronted with someone in pain, we
“Frankenstein” by Mary Shelly explores the concept of the body, life, ‘the self’ and most of importantly humanity, which is repeatedly questioned throughout the novel. The definition of humanity is the quality of being humane or in other words someone that can feel or possess compassion. Despite all the facts against the “monster” in “Frankenstein” he is indeed what one would consider being human. Humanity isn’t just about ones physical appearance but also includes intellect and emotion. Some people argue that the “monster” is not a human for he was not a creature that was born from “God” or from a human body. That being said, the “monster” is not only able to speak different languages, he can also show empathy - one of many distinct traits that set humans apart from the animals. Both the “monster” and his creator, Victor, hold anger and feel a sense of suffering throughout the novel. Victor is a good person with good intentions just like most individuals, but makes the mistake of getting swept up into his passion of science and without thinking of the consequences he creates a “monster”. After completing his science project, he attempts to move forward with his life, however his past – i.e., the “monster” continues to follow and someone haunt him. While one shouldn’t fault or place blame on Frankenstein for his mistakes, you also can’t help but feel somewhat sympathetic for the creature. Frankenstein just wants to feel accepted and loved, he can’t help the way he treats people for he’s only mimicking how people have treated him, which in most cases solely based on his appearance. Unlike most of the monsters we are exposed to in films past and present, the character of the “monster” ...