Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley mocks society when she makes the monster very gentle and then turns him into the monster people see him as. She also shows the themes of obsession with vengeance and the quest for knowledge when Frankenstein creates the monster then abandons him triggering revenge within the monster. Victor creates the monster with thoughts to change the world, but instead he ends up putting his loved ones in danger. He seeks revenge on the monster he creates causing further conflict. The monster is the good one in the book but even he seeks knowledge about who he is, and why he is here, but that does not end well and he relies on his destructive nature to find the answers causing both pain and grief on those around him and on himself. The themes of the quest for knowledge and obsession with vengeance are shown in Frankenstein when Victor creates and abandons his monster causing the monster to monster to want to know his purpose causing him to become destructive and Victor to seek revenge for the death of his loved ones.

When Victor Frankenstein gets his hands on the books by Cornelius Agrippa, he knows that he has to change the world, and this ambition cause him to lose his loved ones at the hand of his creation. When he is young, he disobeys his father by reading books by Cornelius Agrippa when he is not supposed to. And he does not stop there, because when he returns home, the first thing on his mind is to “...procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus.” (Shelley 39) As a child, Victor is full of himself and thinks he can change the world. He is curious, and is eager to know as much as he can. When explaining this to Walton, Victor says "Curiosity, earnest research to...

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...to seek vengeance for everything he has gone through, he realizes his mistake but by then, there is nothing left for him anymore. Victor seeks for the monster to destroy him, and in the end, he destroy himself because of the mistakes he made. Throughout the novel, Mary Shelley is constantly bringing up the nature and its destructive methods. If messed with it like Victor did, self-destruction will occur. Also, ignorance is bliss is one of the important messages because if Victor had not wanted more knowledge, he would have been happy and all of his family members might have survived. If victor had not been curious, he would not have to seek revenge on his creation for destroying his family. Throughout the book, obsession with knowledge and the quest for knowledge are shown as deadly factors because of the effects produced.

Works Cited

frankenstein by mary shelley

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