Frankenstein - Explain how the character of the monster develops

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Frankenstein - Explain how the character of the monster develops

throughout the novel. How does Shelley use features such as language

and structure to create and destroy sympathy for it?

The novel I have been studying is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. It is

a story that makes the reader vary their feelings from pity to anger

and disgust. The novel is about a scientist called Frankenstein who

creates a monster using the limbs of corpses. He later learns that the

moral issues behind creating the monster were unjust as it comes back

to slowly destroy him and his life. It is told through the letters

that R.Walton sends to his sister. Walton is sailor who is sailing to

the North Pole and meets Frankenstein on his way and listens to his

story.

The book was written in 1817 when Shelley had run away from home and

controversially eloped with the already married Percy Bysshe Shelley.

In Frankenstein we see the monster being hated and abhorred by humans.

Here we see humans having prejudice as everybody attacks him. He runs

away because no one will give him a chance, similarly, Shelley left

home because no one gave her a chance as even her own father never

truly forgave her. From this we may conclude that Shelley wanted to

put across the point of society having the lapse of prejudice,

pre-judging people even if they mean well and are sincere. Although

the modern world is very different today from that of Shelley's day,

human nature has not changed as prejudice and discrimination are still

present today.

At the time when Frankenstein was first written books were very good

forms of entertainment. The young and the old together would read the

book as to be scared by the horror in it. Today, with the introduction
...

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...eople created the

monsters inner ugliness by prejudging it and then moan about it when

it turns evil.

To conclude Shelley makes the reader have sympathy for the monster and

then destroys it using different methods. She uses narration,

settings, symbolism and the characters themselves to do so. She also

structures the poem in such a way that the reader feels disgust and

sympathy at various times. The monster is a successful literary

character because he makes you change your mind on whether you like or

loathe him. The reader loathes him for destroying Frankenstein's life

but feels that Frankenstein destroyed the monster's life when he

created it and so the reader feels empathy. Shelley uses themes such

as justice, prejudice and revenge in the novel, which are still

present today making Frankenstein a popular novel today as well as two

hundred years ago.

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