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Analyses of imagination in frankenstein
Analysis of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Victor frankenstein character analysis vs monster
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In the book, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, she creates very unique characters in the story. She does what no one had done before and writes something that would influence books and movies for years. One specific character, whose name is Victor Frankenstein, is questioned if he is a hero or not. Victor Frankenstein is the creator of the Monster. Victor Frankenstein is not a hero because he is irresponsible throughout the whole story and it creates a lot of problems.
First of all, Victor isn’t a hero because he irresponsibly creates the monster. He created the monster because he thought it would be cool, but is it good to pretend to be God. Some say that only God should have the power to make life, and Mary Shelley really made people angry by having someone create life other than God. Victor doesn’t think about all the bad things that could happen by creating the monster, and for this he is very irresponsible. On page 57 of the novel, Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein says, “I beheld a wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created.” Victor is saying that he is scared of th...
If Victor had stayed around and showed the monster the real world, he might have not have went on to perform violent actions. This portrays Victor as a selfish character and gives more of an insight on his personal life. As a child, Victor is only interested in furthering his own knowledge and not worried about anyone else. He spent much of his time “drawing the picture of [his] early days... when [he] would account to [himself] for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled [his] destiny” (Shelley 34), or otherwise a magnificent creation that would change his future. When constructing the Monster, he put all of his relatives in the back of his mind, and only focused on his own success and victory. This further explains the theme of being selfless and only doing certain things that will benefit
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
He toils endlessly in alchemy, spending years alone, tinkering. However, once the Creature is brought to life, Frankenstein is no longer proud of his creation. In fact, he’s appalled by what he’s made and as a result, Frankenstein lives in a perpetual state of unease as the Creature kills those that he loves and terrorizes him. Victor has realized the consequences of playing god. There is irony in Frankenstein’s development, as realized in Victor’s desire to destroy his creation. Frankenstein had spent so much effort to be above human, but his efforts caused him immediate regret and a lifetime of suffering. Victor, if he had known the consequences of what he’s done, would have likely not been driven by his desire to become better than
He created a life, and then spontaneously he quickly decided to run away from his creation. Victor’s actions after creating what he created were really irresponsible, and did not correctly took care of the circumstance’s he put himself in. The creation was never actually evil, but he felt abandoned by what could had been called his father. Frankenstein, the monster, was only a seeker for companionship. He strongly desired to feel loved, rather than abandoned. Society’s evil behavior toward the monster is what altered the monster’s conduct and followed to how he acted.
Every story revolves around a hero. Heroes make an impact on everyday life, positive and negative, so it is common for writers to revolve their stories around them. One of the several hero archetypes used in novels is the tragic hero. A tragic hero is a person of noble stature, whose fatal flaw leads them to abuse the free will they once controlled. This moment of choice leads to a punishment which far exceeds anything deserving. The fall is not pure loss; the hero gains self knowledge through an increase in awareness, but the consequences are far reaching. Mary Shelly is an example of one of the many authors who create literature around a tragic hero. Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is filled with many intricate characters, but only one fits into the tragic hero archetype. The moment of choice for Victor Frankenstein, who was once a happy, noble individual, creates a devastating fate for himself, leaving him as an ideal tragic hero.
..., played God, abandoned his creation, and then hid any relation to the creature. Victor is quite at fault for the murders that take place in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. True, the monster does know right from wrong, the difference is he was not brought up by his parents that way. How to live life is something that is learned and imprinted through experience and guidance. The monster was never fully given the chance to live because upon the day he arrived he was instantly rejected. Victor created the monster physically and emotionally within himself and in turn died by it.
Victor Frankenstein, the main character in Mary Shelley’s novel, is the creator of the monster. When Victor created the monster, he believed he created the monster for the betterment of humankind, but he actually created the monster because he desired to prove to the world that an average human can do Godly acts. The desire to create the monster goes back to Victor’s childhood. As a young kid, Victor’s passions always lied in science and chemistry and in college; he became obsessed with the idea of creating life out of inanimate objects. He then decided to specialize in Alchemy. Within Shelley’s book Frankenstein, Victor said:
As a romantic novel Victor is responsible, because he abandoned his creation. As an archetype novel, Victor is the villain, because he was trying to play god. Finally, Victor as a Gothic novel, Victor is at fault, because, he and the creature are two different parts of the same person. If Frankenstein is looked at as a romantic novel, Victor, not the creature, is truly the villain. When Victor created the creature, he didn't take responsibility for it. He abandoned it, and left it to fend for itself. It is unfair to bring something into the world, and then not teach it how to survive. The creature was miserable, and just wanted a friend or someone to talk to. On page 115, the creature said, "Hateful day when I received life! Accursed the creator. Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust." This line shows the agony the monster was in, because of how he looked when he was created which led to even Victor running away from him. If Victor didn't run, he could have taught the monster and made his life happy. After the creature scared the cottagers away he said, "I continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of utter ...
Although some critics say that the monster Victor has created is to blame for the destruction and violence that follow the experiment, it is Victor who is the responsible party. First, Victor, being the scientist, should have known how to do research on the subject a lot more than he had done. He obviously has not thought of the consequences that may result from it such as the monster going crazy, how the monster reacts to people and things, and especially the time it will take him to turn the monster into the perfect normal human being. This is obviously something that would take a really long time and a lot of patience which Victor lacks. All Victor really wants is to be the first to bring life to a dead person and therefore be famous. The greed got to his head and that is all he could think about, while isolating himself from his friends and family. In the play of Frankenstein, when Victor comes home and sets up his lab in the house, he is very paranoid about people coming in there and finding out what he is doing. At the end of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor says:
Victor has a lack of respect for the natural world that leads him on the path to becoming a monster. In creating the monster Victor is trying to change the natural world. He is trying to play the role of god by creating life.
A monster according to the online dictionary is many things; it can be a creature so ugly or monstrous that it scares people, an animal that is not of a normal shape behaviour or character, an animal or human that is huge in size, or a person who excites horror by wickedness or cruelty. I would describe a monster as someone who commits evil deeds and whose general mindset is to cause suffering on other living creatures. By my definition of a monster this makes victors creation a monster but not Victor.
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.
After Frankenstein discovered the source of human life, he became wholly absorbed in his experimental creation of a human being. Victor's unlimited ambition, his desire to succeed in his efforts to create life, led him to find devastation and misery. "...now that I have finished, the beauty of the dream had vanished..." (Shelley 51). Victor's ambition blinded him to see the real dangers of his project. This is because ambition is like a madness, which blinds one self to see the dangers of his actions. The monster after realizing what a horror he was demanded that victor create him a partner. "I now also began to collect the materials necessary for my new creation, and this was like torture..." (Shelley 169). Victor's raw ambition, his search for glory, has left him. His eyes have been opened to see his horrible actions, and what have and could become of his creations. As a result, Victor has realized that he is creating a monster, which could lead to the downfall of mankind. His choice is simple, save his own life or save man.
Victor Frankenstein was the creator of the monster in the book. He was an ambitious man who had high hopes and dreams for himself, but this characteristic was the cause of his downfall. He had a ruthless desire to obtain forbidden knowledge- a knowledge that only God was worthy of having. This lead him to lock himself in his laboratory, disregarding his family, friends, and health. His one purpose was to create life. In his quest to create a human being and bestow the power of life, Victor eventually did create a creature, but this lead to a situation
People are defined by their environment and how they react to their environment. Environments that appear to be perfect on the outside may very well be the cause of misery in man's life because one must be able to cope with their environment. Victor could not cope with his environment and lashed out at the world by trying to attain power. However, things do not always go as planned, and sometime this may be beneficial. One should not judge by external appearance alone. It is what is on the inside that counts. Had Victor Frankenstein been taught ethics such as this, his life, as well as the lives of those he loved, could have been saved. Also, the life of the creature could have been free of pain and hatred. The monster is a symbol for the outcasts and rejected of society. He is also a reflection of Victor, meaning that Victor was also considered an outcast. The reality of an animated object reflecting something that one does not want to see, combined with being alone in the world, is enough to drive man mad. The monster, in some ways, creates a harsh reality for Victor. Either love what you create or be destroyed by it.