In this essay I will be analysing Mary Shelley’s presentation of Victor Frankenstein from Chapter’s 1to 10 in her gothic horror novel. Superficially, we can tell that Shelley portrays Victor as kind, loving and intellectual. However after a more detailed analysis we come to the realization that Victor is presented much differently to the prior interpretation. Firstly, at first glance Shelley conveys Victor’s intelligence in his interest to question nature and the laws of science, and life. The fact that he thinks outside the box and aims to reach a goal as complicated as to create matter, something scientifically known to be impossible, is reason enough to give him credit. He is also a natural researcher, always hungry for more learning and, highly ambitious. Secondly, after reading over the novel a few times one can see that Shelley depicts Victor as a selfish character who is only concerned about his own health. Victor is completely focused on creating human life and does not care that he is neglecting his family, Elizabeth more importantly his education. The text juxtaposes Vi...
Victor's gradual descent towards the dark side of the human psyche is clearly portrayed through Shelley's writing. As stated in previous discussions, Victor's original motivation in pursuing a career in the science field was purely out of love for the world of science and a true passion for acquiring knowledge. However, as the novel continues, we witness his motives go from authentic to impure. As such, we delve into the dark side. His pursuit of knowledge and his creation of the monster are all on the purer or perhaps lighter side of the psyche. It isn't until he abandons him that we begin to see him cross over. His choices to abandon the creature, to let someone else to die for its crimes, to create it a companion only to kill her, to allow the ones he loved to die at its hand, and to still refuse to claim it in the end are all acts
Shelley characterizes Victor in a way that he acts on his impulses and not with rationality. As a result, Victor does not take the time to teach or talk to his creation. This action leads to his downfall as his loved one’s are killed by the Creature taking revenge on Victor for leaving him to fend for himself. Victor’s actions have consequences, hence why all his loved one’s are murdered because of his instinct to leave out of fear and safety. Shelley proves that our id demands immediate gratification of needs and thus, is in control of our actions.
Victor Frankenstein creates a creature that he considers to be treacherous. Since the creature was created it obtains no knowledge of what it is or what is happening. Victor abandons the creature and the creature becomes filled with hate as it is constantly rejected by humans. The creature uses nature to survive. The creature also self teaches himself and becomes aware that he is a monster. He then swears to get revenge on Victor for leaving him alone. He gets his revenge by killing Victor's family. Victor then swears to get revenge on the creature, and decides that the best way to do so is by bringing the creature as far away from human civilization as possible. Thesis?!
because of the way he is just abandoned by Victor and the way in which
Romanticism deals a lot with elements and how they affect human beings. In the very beginning of the story, Captain Walton finds Victor nearly dead after his ship is stuck in a sea of ice, where he says, "...and we beheld, stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end." (12). Ice symbolizes death and pain or illness in Romantic novels. This shows there is no coincidence in Victor's state of being and the environment they are in at the time. This is also one of those subtle nods towards former works Shelley had read. For anyone who has read "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (another Romantic work), his ship
The idea for the novel of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein came to her one night when she was staying in the company of what has been called ‘her male coterie’, including Lord Byron and her husband, Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley’s whole life seems to have been heavily influenced by men. She idolised her father, William Godwyn, and appears to have spent a good part of her life trying very hard to impress both him and her husband. There seems to have been a distinct lack of female influence, her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, having died weeks after her birth, being replaced by a neglectful step-mother. These aspects of her life are perhaps evident in her novel. The characters and plot of Frankenstein were perhaps influenced by Shelley’s conflicting feelings about the predominately masculine circle which surrounded her, and perhaps the many masculine traits that we see in novel were based upon those of the male figures in Shelley’s own life. In this essay I will attempt to show some of these traits.
The wise Uncle Ben once told Peter Parker, “remember, with great power. Comes great responsibility.” There is no greater power than that acquired by the infamous Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when he discovers the secret to creating life. Shelley’s Frankenstein is a tale of creation that depicts acts of human conception and discovery. The Oxford English Dictionary defines creation as “the action or process of bringing something into existence from nothing by divine or natural agency; the fact of being so created.” It defies the natural order of things and creates a world of its own. The multiple acts of creation and discovery bring upon a certain set of responsibilities and implications as depicted by David Collings who analyzes the responsibilities that come as a result of these acts in his essay “The Monster and the Maternal Thing: Mary Shelley’s Critique of Ideology”. The main act of creation is evident through Victor Frankenstein’s creation of the Being which is depicted most prominently in the novel. However, there are multiple other acts of creation and discovery that may not be apparent at first sight. One of the most important being, Victor’s discovery of the knowledge required to create life. Apart from initially creating the Being, Victor also plays a critical role in the Being’s evolution into a raging and vengeful creature. Perhaps above all other acts of creation and discovery is Victor’s personal creation of himself into a monster. As stated by Collings most of these acts of creation on Victor’s part are subconsciously brought upon because of their lack of a maternal figure but also in part because of his desire for fame and glory. However, he is blinded by his motives and forgets that with his...
In this essay I will be looking at the differences between the creation of the first and second monster, how Mary Shelley portrays the feelings of Victor and the monster and the different myths and legends that she refers to within the novel. Victor Frankenstein had a wonderful life as a child: 'No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself' (p.39) He was loving and cared deeply for his family, especially for his foster-sister, Elizabeth, who he looked upon as his own, and saw as a 'more than sister' (p.37). Victor always had an 'eager desire to learn' (p.39) about 'the secrets of heaven and earth' (p.39). When he was thirteen years old he started studying the works of Cornelius Agrippa and the fact that his father called it all 'sad trash' (p.40) fuelled his curiosity and enthusiasm and caused him to study even more which was to him, 'the fatal impulse that led to my [his] ruin' (p.41).
Upon first discovering how to make life, Victor is overwhelmed with excitement and pride, feeling as though he has unlocked the greatest power on earth. His imagination is “too much exalted” by this newfound ability, and thus determines there is no “animal as complex and wonderful as man” for him to attempt as his first creation (Shelley 43). Frankenstein does not contemplate how he will react to or interact with the human he gives life to, or that he has created an extremely twisted parent-child relationship by creating a human from dead bodies. His general lack of concern regarding the consequences of his remarkable yet dangerous power is the root of the rest of the conflict between him and his monster throughout the rest of the novel, and it exemplifies Shelley’s underlying theme that science should not be pushed past morally and psychologically safe boundaries.
To understand the importance of this event and its effect on the novel, we must analyze it in detail. Through the novel, Victor is recalling his entire life to Robert Walton, an explorer traveling to the North Pole (Shelley 2). In chapter 2, he tells about the time
Every artist draws inspiration from somewhere, and the inspiration shows in their work. When looking deeper into the life of Mary Shelley, it is easy to say that the inspiration she drew to create her novel Frankenstein, came from her own personal experiences. Frankenstein is riddled parallels to Marry Shelley’s own life. It was not just by mere coincidences either, Mary Shelley makes various references to family members (specifically by name), places she visited, and situations she faced, herself, all of these experiences are documented in her novel Frankenstein.
After learning about the life of Mary Shelley, I have grown to appreciate the novel, Frankenstein, even more since the first time I read it. She led a life nearly, as tragic as the monster she created through her writing. Mary seems to pull some of her own life experiences in Victor’s background, as in both mothers died during or after childbirth. Learning about Mary’s personal losses, I have gained a better appreciation of her as an author and a woman of the 17th century. She had association with some the most influential minds of that
Although “Frankenstein” is the story of Victor and his monster, Walton is the most reliable narrator throughout the novel. However, like most narrator’s, even his retelling of Victor’s story is skewed by prejudice and favoritism of the scientist’s point of view. Yet this could be attributed to the only view points he ever gets to truly hear are from Victor himself and not the monster that he only gets to meet after he comes to mourn his fallen master.
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...
She was an avid reader from a young age, therefore quite smart and literate. Young Victor was evidently a bright person, as he went on to University, and developed into an extremely enthused scientist. Many things in Shelley’s life seemed to be prefigurations to events which were to be later written in Frankenstein, as did, also, events in the novel seem to occur later to Shelley in life. In the Frankenstein novel a young girl drowns, due to the appearance of the monster.