For this paper, I will be taking a formalist approach to looking at what type of irony, tone, and symbolism Mary Shelley uses in her novel Frankenstein. Most may think this book is about a monster named Frankenstein that goes around and kills for fun, but in reality, this monster name is not Frankenstein but it is his creator 's name but the word “Frankenstein” makes people think of a big groaning, green zombie with screws in his throat, a square head, dark hair, and does nothing but kill and cause people to run in terror because his freaky height and looks. Although his scary looks may be a bit similar to the real thing, the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is actually a monster that wants to learn and be loved. This example of irony …show more content…
However, the ironic factor is the monster behaves a certain way because he doesn’t know right from wrong and, the only reason why he is doing all these things is because he wants to feel loved. Victor Frankenstein’s monster has had a hard life to begin with. Having never seen his own ugly looks before, the monster comes in contact with people to befriend them, but the people are so scarce by this eight-foot tall zombie that they run away screaming. This event occurs many times within the novel, specifically with the man in the hut and the people in the cottage. Frankenstein’s monster does not know why these people are running from him, but what he does know is that he’s alone and his creator abandoned him because of it. After a few days, while searching through some papers he took from Frankenstein’s lab, the monster finds a notebook with all the information of him being created, but it didn’t go too well because the monster sadly said, “I sickened as I read. ‘Hateful day when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony. “Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? My form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred” (93). By this point, …show more content…
Overall in the novel, knowledge, and light, is only viewed in a good way. Walton begins the novel with a full of hope statement: “What could not be expected in the country of eternal light?”(1). Walton views on the light are pure goodness. Victor also describes the light in a good way, when he describe the light shining on the lake and says it is “the most beautiful figures” (62). This almost would have been true until this point of view is broken. Before Victor created the monster he only wants to do research on things to expand his knowledge of life. He enjoyed nature and science. He put all of his time into science and into trying to discover how to make life. Victor’s great motivation to create life was broken when he created life for the first time. The monster‘s existence made victor see that what he did was wrong and no longer wanted to embrace his knowledge. Victor begins to see that there are two sides to light, that it can either give light or it can burn light. Both the monster and Victor notice the different outcomes that light gives off. Victor describes the light as wondrous and brilliant, but immediately after his first creation he realizes that light wasn’t good after all. And the Monsters view of light wasn 't all too great because
At first, The Monster is very kind and sympathetic. He has a good heart, as shown when he collected firewood for the family on the brink of poverty. Like every other human creation, he was not born a murderer. All the Monster wanted was to be accepted and loved by Victor Frankenstein and the other humans but instead he was judged by his appearance and considered to be dangerous. The Monster says, “like Adam, I was created apparently united by no link to any other being in existence…many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition; for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me” (page 105). This line is an important part of the novel because the Monster lets it be known how like Adam he was created into this world completely abandoned and like Satan he is angry with those people who have found contentment and satisfaction in their lives. The rejection and unwelcome feeling he is faced with, is the main reason the Monster becomes a killer. Watching another family show love towards each other made the Monster realize how alienated he truly was. He did not know how to deal with his pain and emotions so he murders as
The start of Robert Walton and the monster’s final conversation, this paragraph near the end of Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein uncovers the untold perspective of Victor Frankenstein’s creation. Revealing to Robert that Frankenstein’s misery was not the only casualty of the novel, Shelly’s utilization of the monster’s pain illustrates mankind’s hatred and abandonment of the artificial being. Moreover, directing spiteful words towards Victor Frankenstein, Felix De Lacey, and even himself, the monster’s narration reflects the being’s unresolved emotions that have emerged because of society’s cruelty. Although science fiction, the narrative of Frankenstein’s monster exemplifies the literary reproduction of England’s monarchy deserting its own
Frankenstein explains that, as the monster sees the being that Frankenstein is creatingThe monster looks at the new creature with a smile because he knows that this thing will eventually become his companion. Once she is created, the monster will finally be able to reach a form of happiness and will no longer have to live in complete solitude. However, when Frankenstein destroys this half-finished creature, the monster exclaims, Frankenstein has extinguished the monster’s hope of companionship, so the monster vows to destroy Frankenstein’s life. He no longer has anything to live for, so the monster’s only motivation in life becomes revenge against his creator. This quote from Shelly’s book shows how much the monster valued companionship and how much all other beings value it to. Frankenstein feels that he has nothing left to live for when the monster kills his loved ones. He explains that while his companions are dead and he is still alive, Frankenstein has no reason to live, because his life is meaningless without his friends and family that were killed by the
Mary Shelley uses irony in the development of Frankenstein and the creature in order to create more dynamic and complex characters who are foils of one another.
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.
In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, many similarities can be seen between the creature and his creator, Victor Frankenstein. While Victor and the creature are similar, there are a few binary oppositions throughout the book that make them different. The binary oppositions in the novel serve as thematic contrast; and some of the most illustrative oppositions between the two characters are on the focus of family, parenthood, isolation and association with others.
Even when Victor rejects him, the monster still seeks love from society and performs unselfish acts. He seeks the love from others. Longing for company, the monster stays in the cottage without revealing him and watches the family that lives there. By watching them he learned how to speak and read. The monster tried to understand the meaning of “beauty”. He somewhat understood why people he had interacted with had treated him ill and he realized that it was because they were frighten by his hideous appearance. “The absolute other cannot be selfed, that the monster has properties which will not be constrained by proper measure”(Spivak). This goes back to the idea of “other”, now the monster himself understand that he 's different from human, that he doesn 't have the properties as human do so he must be interior to them. Furthermore we see that by watching the family in the cottage, the monster soon starts to love the family. He liked the way they had affection and love they had for each other. “The gentle manners and beauty of cottagers greatly endeared them to me; when they were unhappy, I felt depressed; when they rejoiced, I sympathized in their joy”(Shelly100). This shows that the monster was very loving and caring towards the family as would a innocent
Frankenstein’s creation questions “Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?”(Shelly 155). The creation is blaming his creator for making him into the monster that he is and turning away from him when he needed help, yet Victor did not create the monster for the express reason to commit sins, the monster was created with free will, just like every other human, yet the monster chose his path of murder and revenge. The creation’s reason for these sins is a societal rejection due to his horrific looks. The creation believes that if he is loved by a female so “The Monster’s proposed solution is for Frankenstein to create a bride for him who would reciprocate his love and thus render him benign”(Britton 7). The monster holds on to the idea that he is not inherently evil, but that he has just not received affection or care from someone. Frankenstein believes this to be untrue and that creating another monster would just release more chaos into the world. The monster continues to blame his evil deeds on his sadness saying “I am malicious because I am miserable”(Shelley 174). The monster
The monster does not know companionship for the entirety of its life. As soon as Frankenstein creates it, Frankenstein flees with horror, leaving the monster alone to aimlessly roam the earth. As the monster tells Frankenstein, “You, my creator, abhor me, what hope can I gather from your fellow-creatures, who owe me nothing? They spurn and hate me” (89). When the monster attempts to talk to the German peasant family that unintentionally taught him how to speak, they attack and fear it. The monster then flees the country and rescues a young country girl, but upon her return, the girl’s father shoots the monster. The monster swears vengeance, saying, “This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and, as recompense, I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound, which shattered the flesh and bone” (125). Despite the monster’s initial kind-heartedness, life soon forces it to become cruel. The monster relentlessly searches for Frankenstein, so he can politely ask him to create an equally monstrous wife. When Frankenstein refuses, it swears revenge, saying, “I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred” (129). The monster then proceeds to murder everyone Frankenstein cares about, including his family, Henry Clerval, and
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.
Frankenstein Analysis Essay Imagery, tone, and theme all play an important role in providing structure and connecting the reader to the author’s opinions and thoughts in the story. Mary Shelley, in the novel Frankenstein, uses all three to depict Frankenstein in a certain perspective and provide insight for the reader about how she feels about his actions. Throughout the story, Mary Shelley uses descriptive imagery in order to effectively illustrate events in the novel to the reader. One of the more detailed examples of imagery can be found when Frankenstein first animates his monster.
The idea of duality permeates the literary world. Certain contradictory commonplace themes exist throughout great works, creation versus destruction, light versus dark, love versus lust, to name a few, and this trend continues in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The pivotal pair in this text however, is monotony versus individuality. The opposing entities of this pairing greatly contrast against each other in Frankenstein, but individuality proves more dominant of the two in this book.
...ain knowledge in hopes that he will no longer be beaten and attacked by society for what he is. “…my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery” (16.1). When his thirst for knowledge gets backfired and fails he becomes violent. Concluding the death of Victor, not much is known about the fate of the monster. The monster surely met his fate as well thus proving the search for knowledge to be dangerous.
Mary Shelley’s world renowned book, “Frankenstein”, is a narrative of how Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant chemist, succeeds in creating a living being. Although Frankenstein’s creation is benevolent to begin with, he soon turns murderous after being mistreated by humans. His anger turns towards Frankenstein, as he was the one who brought him into the world that shuns him. The Monster then spends the rest of the story trying to make his creator’s life as miserable as his own. This novel is an excellent example of the Gothic Romantic style of literature, as it features some core Gothic Romantic elements such as remote and desolate settings, a metonymy of gloom and horror, and women in distress.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley portrays an individual in a unique situation trying to overcome daily interactions while being faced with inconceivable misfortunes. Created by Victor Frankenstein, who set out on a journey to bring life to scrapped pieces of waste, he was then abandoned and left to fend for himself in a world he was abruptly brought into. After being abandoned by his creator for his less than appealing looks, this then sparked his inevitable desire for revenge. Eventually leading to the destruction of those associated with his creator. Knowing that he will never fit in, the monster began to act out in hopes of getting back at his creator for what he did. His vulnerability due to missing guidance and parental figures in his beginning stages of life contributed to his behavior. The books and article Family Crisis and Children’s Therapy Groups written by Gianetti, Audoin, and Uzé, Victim Of Romance: The Life And Death Of Fanny Godwin by Maurice Hindle, and Social Behavior and Personality by Lubomir Lamy, Jacques Fishcher-Lokou, and Nicolas Gueguen support why the monster acts the way he does. The monster’s behavior stems from Victor’s actions at the beginning of his life and therefore is not to blame. The creature in Frankenstein is deserving of sympathy even though he committed those murders because the lack of parental guidance, lack of family, and lack of someone to love led him to that. All in all his actions were not malicious, but only retaliation for what he had been put through.