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.
In the novel Frankenstein, the monster is deserving of empathy because as a young child he did not have the guidance nor care from a parent or guardian like most people do. He was brought into the world and then cruelly rejected by the ...
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...nster was never born evil or with malicious intentions. Victor’s absence in his life since the monster’s childhood is what initiated is behaviors. From then on, society’s rejection as well as his own creator’s ignorance furthered the monster’s desire for vengeance. Victor abandoning him, the lack of parental figures in his life, and the lack of “family” kept it in the monster’s head that he would never be accepted. After realizing that his creator didn’t want him he attempted to find happiness and love elsewhere but was rejected from society. Everyone was mortified of his appearance and that made it impossible for him to feel normal. The creature only resorted to murdering people because that was his way of releasing his feelings. If it had not been for society not wanting to be accepting of different people, the “monster” would not have been so monstrous after all.
As Frankenstein is enroute to his pursuit of gaining more knowledge, he states, “I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed” (Shelley 41). Frankenstein’s decision in allowing his intellectual ambitions to overpower everything else in his life leads him to be blinded to the dangers of creating life. He isolates himself from his society when creating the monster, letting himself be immersed in his creation while being driven by his passions, allowing nobody to be near him. The fact that he allows this creation of a monster to consume his total being reveals how blinded he is to the immorality of stepping outside the boundaries of science and defying nature. His goal in striving to achieve what wants to in placing man over nature makes him lose his sense of self as all he is focused on is the final product of his creation. He starts to realize his own faults as after he has created the monster, he becomes very ill and states, “The form of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was forever before my eyes, and I raved incessantly concerning him” (48). His impulsive decision to make the monster leads him to abhorring it as it does not turn out to be what he has expected. Because he chooses to isolate himself in creating the
Although humans have the tendency to set idealistic goals to better future generations, often the results can prove disastrous, even deadly. The tale of Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, focuses on the outcome of one man's idealistic motives and desires of dabbling with nature, which result in the creation of horrific creature. Victor Frankenstein was not doomed to failure from his initial desire to overstep the natural bounds of human knowledge. Rather, it was his poor parenting of his progeny that lead to his creation's thirst for the vindication of his unjust life. In his idealism, Victor is blinded, and so the creation accuses him for delivering him into a world where he could not ever be entirely received by the people who inhabit it. Not only failing to foresee his faulty idealism, nearing the end of the tale, he embarks upon a final journey, consciously choosing to pursue his creation in vengeance, while admitting he himself that it may result in his own doom. The creation of an unloved being and the quest for the elixir of life holds Victor Frankenstein more accountable for his own death than the creation himself.
With nobody to reason with, Victor makes senseless decisions while he is alone. Victor begins this with his process of creating the monster. Nobody in the right mind would ever dig up graves, but that is just what victor goes and does. Once this creation is finally given life, which Victor has spent two years striving for, Victor foolishly abandons it. Victor comes to his senses to some degree after he brings life to the monster as he states, “‘now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream had vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 43). Had there been companions around Victor during this creation time, perhaps someone would have been able to guide Victor away from creating the “wretch” (Shelley 43) he so hopelessly conceived. As for the monster, he makes fairly good decisions even without guidance from anyone, including Victor, his creator. The monster has the desire to learn and gain knowledge as a genuine individual. As the monster is continuously rejected and shunned by mankind, his natural benevolence turns to malevolence. In his loneliness, the monster wrongly decides to declare “‘everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery’” (Shelley 126). Say the monster was able to have comrades of some kind around him, he would not have turned to this
In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein the protagonist Victor Frankenstein creates a monster. The monster in the novel is deprived of a normal life due to his appearance. Like the creature, some serial killers today are killers due to the same rejection. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley warns that a childhood of abuse and neglect will often result in evil actions.
Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is a thought provoking story to read because the subject matter speaks to me. Dark, supernatural and gothic is exactly the style of reading I would choose in my own reading choices. It was only one step from my Victorian Vampire reading to Frankenstein therefore my choice to read the novel was almost a given to me. Several areas that I as a human can relate to are the human nature of each character, the unrelenting revenge the monster feels, and betrayal in the pursuit of self-preservation Victor bestows on his monster, his family, and mankind. The story speaks of betrayal, a strong an intense emotion that hurt the monster to the core so deeply he commits unspeakable acts. Frankenstein outlines Victor’s betrayal of his son, the monster. Victor literally created a child, a rebirth of flesh in his own design but he felt no love or sense of responsibility for the monsters well-being. This betrayal of the preverbal parent over their “child” is felt greatly by the monster and Frankenstein suffers at his own cost, unwilling and incapable to see he was his own destructor. A notable act of betrayal is when Victor can but does not save Justine from death. His own brother was dead and he was
The argument of whether the monster was evil or not is very controversial. Taken into consideration of the neglectment that was bound to the monster, he is often found villainous without being given the chance to prove otherwise. The monster was abandoned so therefore he had no ethical guidance. He also had a moment of self-realization when he was able to distinguish his own moral compass. The monster's desire for companionship brought out his malicious intents. These reasons of acts of evilness are represented in the novel Frankenstein. Mary Shelley makes this clear in her writing by expressing the emotions that the monster is going through from the beginning of his life until he takes his life on a new journey and by showing how the monster treated and reacted towards his own personal problems. The creature was an evil being as his murderous nature and extreme
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.
Victor Frankenstein assumes the sole responsibility for the deaths of his friends and family due to his inability to learn from nature and past experiences in terms of his creation. Victor disregards the teachings of nature and constructs a monster capable of destruction, he ignores his preceding experiences with self-education and aggravates the monster to kill, and fails to protect his loved ones by his incapacity to deduce the creature’s objectives from it’s prior activities.
Compassion and empathy are often described as human-kind's greatest quality. Yet, many things can distract or overpower our compassion to allow room for things like cruelty, selfishness, and the need for vengeance. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein has no compassion for his creation; however, his creation is born with large amounts of compassion, but Frankenstein ignores and abuses his monster. Victor’s lack of compassion towards the monster, makes the monster lose his own compassion in a need for vengeance to make his abuser feel the same pain he does.
In the novel "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, the relationship of external apperence and internal feelings are directly related. The creature is created and he is innocent, though he is seaverly deformed. His nature is to be good and kind, but society only views his external appereance which is grotesque. Human nature is to judge by external apperence. He is automatically ostracized and labeled as a monster because of his external apperence. He finnaly realized that no matter how elequintly he speaks and how kind he is, people will never be able to see past his external deformities. Children are fearful of him, Adults think he is dangerous, and his own creator abandons him in disgust. The creature is treated as a monster, therefore he begins to internalize societies view of him and act the like a monster.
Both Frankenstein and the monster suffer greatly through the novel, Frankenstein experiment, that had gone totally wrong. The monster is not mean, in the way that he tried to fit in, into society, but was shunned and never accepted by anyone. The monster lived alone, isolated for everyone and everything, meanwhile Frankenstein suffer as well. He loss everyone around him, in a blink of an eye, in the hands of the monster, regretment as he is the creator of the thing that destroyed his life. Although many blame everything on the monster, in the way he badly behaved, he is not at total fault for his action.As in the way that when the monster commits his crime with passion; he doesn't think apon his actions, but only lives in the moment and his action are his mostly rage.
Alhough Victor Frankenstein calls his creature a monster, and considers it disgusting and abhorrent, it is in fact Frankenstein who behaves monstrously. He claims to have created the creature for a noble purpose: to defeat death. However, it is clear that his motives are largely selfish, as he states: "I was surprised that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret" (36). He creates a living being without considering the consequences, without acknowledging that the grisly nature of its creation and ph...
“Frankenstein” by Mary Shelly explores the concept of the body, life, ‘the self’ and most of importantly humanity, which is repeatedly questioned throughout the novel. The definition of humanity is the quality of being humane or in other words someone that can feel or possess compassion. Despite all the facts against the “monster” in “Frankenstein” he is indeed what one would consider being human. Humanity isn’t just about ones physical appearance but also includes intellect and emotion. Some people argue that the “monster” is not a human for he was not a creature that was born from “God” or from a human body. That being said, the “monster” is not only able to speak different languages, he can also show empathy - one of many distinct traits that set humans apart from the animals. Both the “monster” and his creator, Victor, hold anger and feel a sense of suffering throughout the novel. Victor is a good person with good intentions just like most individuals, but makes the mistake of getting swept up into his passion of science and without thinking of the consequences he creates a “monster”. After completing his science project, he attempts to move forward with his life, however his past – i.e., the “monster” continues to follow and someone haunt him. While one shouldn’t fault or place blame on Frankenstein for his mistakes, you also can’t help but feel somewhat sympathetic for the creature. Frankenstein just wants to feel accepted and loved, he can’t help the way he treats people for he’s only mimicking how people have treated him, which in most cases solely based on his appearance. Unlike most of the monsters we are exposed to in films past and present, the character of the “monster” ...
Today, there are children around the world who are treated badly and abused by their parents. The monster, created by Victor Frankenstein, was raised very poorly; he did not receive love nor care and never was able to experience these feelings for himself. The moment he opened his eyes, he faced neglect- just as
Throughout Frankenstein, one assumes that Frankenstein’s creation is the true monster. While the creation’s actions are indeed monstrous, one must also realize that his creator, Victor Frankenstein, is also a villain. His inconsiderate and selfish acts as well as his passion for science result in the death of his friend and family members and ultimately in his own demise. Throughout the novel, Shelley investigates the idea of monstrosity. She makes the point that a monster does not have to be genuinely evil in order to be considered monstrous.