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Essay on victor frankenstein's character
Essay on victor frankenstein's character
Analysis of the novel frankenstein
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When we are created into this world it’s not by the choice of our own. However, we are created most times out of love from our creator. Like a baby just newly born into this world needs to feel its mothers touch, scent, and security. The bonding makes you feel a connection to your maker of the world and without it a person may feel lost, abandoned, and unloved. From the beginning we hope to build our self-esteem through the love of our creator. Sadly, most people are not loved or accepted by their creator. This leads to a person lashing out in a number of ways that society views unconventional due to the lack of understanding that person suffers through abandonment alone. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley illustrates the theme of monstrosity …show more content…
So, when he created Frankenstein “the monster” he turned out to be this grotesque and unnatural creature which was different from what Victor had imagined. However, at the site of looking at his creation, Victor is now spooked by his appearance and immediately turned off by his own creation. For example, in chapter 5 Victor says, “I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, continued a long time traversing my bed chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.” (Page 35). Again, we can see Shelley’s use of Gothic elements infused with the monstrous theme. However, this causes Victor to immediately stray away from the monster because he views his creation as repulsive and upsetting. Which marks the first sign of abandonment that Victor places on his creation. This doesn’t do any justice for Victor because now the monster is trying to assert himself into Victor’s life but yet feels more and more neglected from the absence of love that Victor doesn’t want to give in terms of having a relationship with …show more content…
Shelley also connects various points about the monster by saying that in most cases committing such cruel acts can only mean that it’s a cry for attention because the monster is desperate for attention that Victor can’t give. However, it’s easy to point the finger at the monster for all of the crimes that he’s committed towards Victor and his family. However, it can be reversed because the monster does suffer injustice in his own
Victor's gradual descent towards the dark side of the human psyche is clearly portrayed through Shelley's writing. As stated in previous discussions, Victor's original motivation in pursuing a career in the science field was purely out of love for the world of science and a true passion for acquiring knowledge. However, as the novel continues, we witness his motives go from authentic to impure. As such, we delve into the dark side. His pursuit of knowledge and his creation of the monster are all on the purer or perhaps lighter side of the psyche. It isn't until he abandons him that we begin to see him cross over. His choices to abandon the creature, to let someone else to die for its crimes, to create it a companion only to kill her, to allow the ones he loved to die at its hand, and to still refuse to claim it in the end are all acts
The repercussions of treating sentient life as monsters or miscreation’s are disastrous. When non-human conscious life is created, it is easier to treat these creations as outsiders rather than accepting them. There are two stories that show this clearly. The novel Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelly and the film Ex Machina by Alex Garland. When self-conscious life is created, it must be treated as such.
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.
As a tragic hero, Victor’s tragedies begin with his overly obsessive thirst for knowledge. Throughout his life, Victor has always been looking for new things to learn in the areas of science and philosophy. He goes so far with his knowledge that he ends up creating a living creature. Victor has extremely high expectations for his creation but is highly disappointed with the outcome. He says, “I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 35). Frankenstein neglects the creature because of his horrifying looks, which spark the beginning of numerous conflicts and tragedies. At this point, the creature becomes a monster because of Victor’s neglect and irresponsibility. The monster is forced to learn to survive on his own, without anyone or anything to guide him along the way. Plus, the monster’s ugly looks cause society to turn against him, ad...
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, explores the monstrous and destructive affects of obsession, guilt, fate, and man’s attempt to control nature. Victor Frankenstein, the novel’s protagonist and antihero, attempts to transcend the barriers of scientific knowledge and application in creating a life. His determination in bringing to life a dead body consequently renders him ill, both mentally and physically. His endeavors alone consume all his time and effort until he becomes fixated on his success. The reason for his success is perhaps to be considered the greatest scientist ever known, but in his obsessive toil, he loses sight of the ethical motivation of science. His production would ultimately grieve him throughout his life, and the consequences of his undertaking would prove disastrous and deadly. Frankenstein illustrates the creation of a monster both literally and figuratively, and sheds light on the dangers of man’s desire to play God.
First, Before the monster is created Victor says that he hopes this creation would bless him as his creator, and that the creature would be excellent nature and would be beautiful. After the creature is created Shelley creates sympathy for him by Victor’s description of him in a unique yet horrific way, “he’s ‘gigantic,” “deformed,” “yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath” this makes the creature abhorrent to typical humans. When thinking of the descriptions together, Shelley has created a vivid, unnatural image of the monster in the mind’s eyes. The language Shelley uses is powerful and emotive “shall I create another like yourself, whose joints wickedness
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist, produces a monster and instead of teaching his monster the mannerisms and norms of society, he abandons him. Victor expects his monster to make it in the harsh, critical society without being taught correct demeanors because he believes that having correct mannerisms is intuitive. A common viewpoint of the book is that Frankenstein’s monster should receive the blame, because he should have had proper nature, but in reality, society nurtured him to act out. Victor isolated the monster, and other members of society followed in Victor’s example and also treated him as so; which made the creature’s actions monstrous. Frankenstein played God, causing society to view his creature as a monster and as a risk to the public, but Frankenstein did not intend to create the monster as dangerous in nature; society nurtured him to act as a beast.
As a romantic, archetype and gothic novel, Victor is responsible for the monsters actions because Victor abandons his creation meaning the creature is dejected and ends up hideous and fiendish. It is unfair to create someone into this world and then just abandon it and not teach it how to survive. The quote from the creature “Why did you make such a hideous creature like me just to leave me in disgust” demonstrates how much agony the creature is in. He is neglected because of his creator. The monster says “The hateful day when I received life! I accurse my creator. Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?” Victor is wholly at fault for his actions, image and evil.
Victor’s lack of compassion and sympathy towards the monster causes him to become angry instead of guilty. His cruelness to his creation made the monster kill and hurt the people he did but “when [he] reflected on [the monster’s] crimes and malice, [Victor’s] hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation,”(Shelley 325). Without compassion Victor thinks that the only way to stop the monster is to get revenge on him, instead of just giving him the empathy and kindness that monster craved. Victor realizes that "if he were vanquished, [he] should be a free man...balanced by those horrors of remorse and guilt which would pursue [him] until death. ”(Shelley 731).
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 ...
In Shelley?s Frankenstein, Victor brings a monster to life, only to abandon it out of fear and horror. ? gThe beauty of the dream had vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart? (Shelley, 35). The reader must question the ethics of Victor. After all, he did bring this creature upon himself.
Mary Shelley shows how both Victor and the monster create sympathy for one another. They are both victims, but they are also wrongdoers. They bring a great burden of suffering to each other lives, causes hatred to be created for the characters.
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.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or; The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818, is a product of its time. Written in a world of social, political, scientific and economic upheaval it highlights human desire to uncover the scientific secrets of our universe, yet also confirms the importance of emotions and individual relationships that define us as human, in contrast to the monstrous. Here we question what is meant by the terms ‘human’ and ‘monstrous’ as defined by the novel. Yet to fully understand how Frankenstein defines these terms we must look to the etymology of them. The novel however, defines the terms through its main characters, through the themes of language, nature versus nurture, forbidden knowledge, and the doppelganger motif. Shelley also shows us, in Frankenstein, that although juxtaposing terms, the monstrous being everything human is not, they are also intertwined, in that you can not have one without the other. There is also an overwhelming desire to know the monstrous, if only temporarily and this calls into question the influence the monstrous has on the human definition.
In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses the motif of monstrosity to convey the theme that a person’s outward appearance is not what makes them a monster but rather their actions or inactions that classify true monstrosity. Despite the fact that the monster Victor Frankenstein creates is a literal example of monstrosity in the novel there are many parts that give meaning to monstrosity within character’s actions. Although Victor appears normal, since he is human his ambitions, secrets, selfishness, and inaction makes him a monster himself. Along with monstrous characters the pursuit of knowledge that is seen in Victor, his monster, and Walton in Frankenstein prove that knowledge can be a monstrosity. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is created using the life stories of different characters in the novel. The novel itself could be seen as a monster created similarly to Victor’s monster.