Nature Vs Nurture In Frankenstein Research Paper

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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a novel about the struggle of acceptance, yet the debate between nature and nurture as well as whom the real monster actually is shines through. Shelley brings the serious juxtapositions of acceptance and rejection, companionship and isolation, and their consequences to readers’ attention through the encounters between man and monster. Victor Frankenstein’s creation is left in isolation and forced to live through everyone’s hatred towards him. Because the monster is a dismembered, strange looking creature made from body parts, many people who meet him are frightened and therefore do not want to form a relationship with him. This can be very damaging to someone, monster or not. The monster’s character is directly …show more content…

Frankenstein grew up in a loving family; even saying, “no youth could have passed more happily than mine” (Shelley 21), while the monster was left alone during his period of infancy. When the monster thinks back on his first moments of life, he recounts that “no father had watched my infant days” The monster is not created evil, but it is through his interactions that he is nurtured into his disturbing behaviors. In the way Shelley portrays the monster, she evidently believes the only way he could have ended up murderous is due to “his hideous physique [which] has made him a social outcast” (Bentley 325). From the beginning, the monster was set up in such a way that it would be almost inevitable that he ends up troubled. One of the earlier encounters with his monster ends with Frankenstein running away from him in fear of his ugliness. At one point, he even questions his existence by asking “who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination?” (Shelley 104). The monster was brought up in such a way that he had no choice but to wonder why his creator made him and treated him this way. Psychologically, being abandoned by the person who was supposed to be his protector. Society is to blame for causing the monster to become inherently evil. Their inexcusable behavior ruined the monster and caused him to wallow in self-pity for the majority of his

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