Heroism In Frankenstein

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In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the monster that Victor Frankenstein creates is both an “instrument as well as a victim” of life’s tragedies. The whole purpose of this monster within the book is to emphasize the consequences of crossing boundaries within the realm of nature given that its mere existence is a violation of one of nature’s more rigid laws: death. Nature lets man go around most her rules, particularly in the case of medicine; in certain senses medicine used in the modern times are as much a part of regenerating life artificially as the creation of the monster was in 1818. But the one rule that Nature is not to be trifled with is on the finality of death: one something dead cold, it is to remain that way, and Victor Frankenstein’s clear violation of that has …show more content…

While the tragic figure of Frankenstein is technically Frankenstein himself, the character that becomes the instrument of tragedy in terms of causing others suffering is the monster that he creates. The monster itself suffers on many levels in terms of social ostracizing and ‘parental’ negligence: society wants nothing to do with it because of how it looks and the fact that it a ‘freak of nature’, and nor does Frankenstein himself, someone the monster considers to be a paternal figure. But to add to that, its situation also uses the monster to inflict suffering on those around him. When it was created, the monster had only good intentions: it tried to socialize, to help anyone in need, like with girl drowning in the lake, but every time, sometimes quite literally, it was shot down. The despair from that is what caused it to turn towards a more darker form of existence. And given that the monster is created to possess both the mental maturity of a child and the strength of a

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