... The constant attention and focus on physical appearances are apparent not only in our society but in Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein, a modern scientist unleashes a creature constructed of dead body parts. The creature’s social acceptance relies heavily on its hideous features, starting with his own creator, Victor Frankenstein. Throughout the novel Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s lack of ethics spurs problematic situations which are the consequences of his...
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...Frankenstein When a crime is committed, the blame is usually placed on the criminal and this is because a crime cannot take place without a criminal. However, a criminal always has a reason for his actions. Crimes can be prevented if proper precautions are taken. In Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein, a creature is created and given life to, by Victor Frankenstein and it causes several emotional pains to him. Yet the monster is not being solely responsible for them. The creature is born like a fully grown newborn, despite its size; it knows nothing of the world. It can be argued that the creature’s mind is like a “blank slate” and that it only learns to be good or bad from its experiences. Therefore it’s not born good or bad, but learns the bad behavior we see in the novel, from those surrounding him. Frankenstein’s monster was judged by society due to his unusual physical appearance and this caused him to become evil and commit murders to his own creator’s loved ones. The encounters the creature has with people he meets, makes him hate himself over and over again because people react with fear and detest to his disproportioned and twisted appearance. The monster demonstrates the reaction of people in the village when they see him as he states, “some of the people ran away when they saw me [the monster] but the others shouted and threw stones at me. They wanted to kill me.” (Shelley 22). The monster feels judged and mistreated by the people of the village. There was no...
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...pinnacle of writing, the gothic horror novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley explores various themes and motifs among them nature versus nurture. She does so through a man attempting to create life named Victor Frankenstein and the Creature he creates. In Frankenstein, Shelley gives examples of the consequences of a spoiled upbringing, the effect on people of their surroundings, the idea of innate goodness, and the idea that people are blank slates upon which their experiences are etched. In the debate of nature versus nature over why people are good or bad, nurture is by far the more influential. A privileged and unrestrained upbringing by overly indulgent parents...
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...horror story, Frankenstein, is about the entanglement between a young and talented scientist, Victor Frankenstein and his creature. Victor Frankenstein rebuilds a human body and uses thunder to activate it. He is worried because of the creature’s ugly face that he abandons him. As soon as the creature realizes he is rejected by the society, he starts to revenge. Mary Shelly used Victor Frankenstein and his creation to reveal the monstrous spirit of human, including sexism, incest and abandonment. The creature tolerates all unfair treatments at first. He chooses to surrender until his fury reforms his personality. He says, “All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things” (Mary...
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...through the use of her characters Victor Frankenstein and his creation. They are constantly craving for the demolition of each other, and it takes a large toll on their mind-set, and even on their loved ones around them. Victor Frankenstein is enraged that his creation murdered some of his loved ones. This results in him to want nothing other than the abolition of his creation, or as he refers to him, “the monster.” The creation only wants love and companionship from others, but is denied the request on multiple accounts due to his horrendous appearance. The creation places the blame for his loneliness on Victor...
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...The True Monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein The True Monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Science reaches its long tangles tentacles into our everyday life and existence, area’s that reach into such studies as the universe, the environment, animals, insects, and even the prehistoric dinosaurs. Victor Frankenstein is a young scientist in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, who unwittingly creates a “monster” that counteracts with man and god’s view and control over the human condition. Victor’s monster becomes a constant threat to his way of life, the woman and family he so dearly treasures. Created as an experiment, only to be thrown into the human world like a day old sandwich is discarded into the trash. Never being taught the difference between right and wrong; the same as a mother snake would lay and keep an egg warm, only to leave it once it has hatched. The question is can the “monster” that is never given a name really be held accountable for his actions, or should the blame fall to his creator. It seems that Shelly is trying to display through her writings that when science is followed merely on the bases of discovery without thought to the affect that the experimentation can have we risk endangering everything that we hold dear. Frankenstein becomes totally enveloped by a sinister passion that fuels his intense desire to create life; an innocent curiosity that leads him to discover what he feels is his life’s purpose. He is so over taken by his quest that...
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...supernatural events and hideous beings encompasses Frankenstein. Over eight feet tall and uncharacteristically dreadful, the Creature is abandoned by his creator and shunned by society. He develops negative emotions in response to this rejection. Those feelings are furthered through his exposure to Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives, the Sorrows of Young Werther, and Ruins of Empires. Ultimately, these experiences and works of literature foreshadow the ultimate downfall of the Creature and his creator, Victor Frankenstein. The Creature is not only the product of various body parts stolen from cemeteries but is also a product of the dark and supernatural. “Resurrected” on a dark, stormy night, the Creature immediately reveals himself as a monstrous being equipped with elementary emotions and reasoning. Victor Frankenstein, the Creature’s creator is shocked by his creation. Living a nightmare, Victor seeks rehabilitation and thus prepares to return home to his family. Unlike a relationship of father-to-son, Victor abandons the Creature in a futile attempt to rid himself of the nightmare he created. However, just before Victor leaves to go back home he receives news of his younger brother’s death. As he walks through the woods where his brother was killed, he catches a glimpse of the Creature and knows that he murdered his brother. As the novel progresses, more of Victors’ loved ones die at the hand of the Creature – even his fiancée. One day, Victor takes a vacation to the mountains to clear...
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...Mary Shelley wrote the novel Frankenstein to have her readers on their toes and want to sleep with one eye open. Frankenstein is about a man named Victor Frankenstein that is fascinated by the mysteries of the natural world and decides that he wants to do the impossible. Victor’s mission was to construct an animate creature by collecting spare body parts. However, a series of tragic events occur after the creation comes to life. The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that a monster is, “something monstrous; especially: a person of unnatural or extreme ugliness, deformity, wickedness, or cruelty” (Merriam-Webster). Before reading the novel the reader would assume the creation is the monster, but Mary Shelley leaves that determination to the reader....
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...accountable for something within one’s power, control, or management. In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, one certain character attempts to avoid his responsibility caused by his genuine desire and determinism for knowledge and fame, which eventually brings a catastrophic tragedy for the novel as a whole. Mary Shelley incorporates themes such as nature of man, curiosity, dangers of knowledge, expectations versus reality, the pursuit of fame and popularity to achieve and depict the character’s actions and reactions. In Shelley’s novel, Victor Frankenstein is depicted as a character that creates the creature and is the primary...
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...who the real monster is. With judgment comes pity, a universal human characteristic that determines a person in a unstable situation looking for help. Analyzing an individuals isolation from society, having parents with poor parenting skills, and manipulation of character can all have an influence of who we pity. In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein she allows us to make our own choices based on details she presents from various characters. Mary Shelley uses the motif of Isolation in exploring the idea of humanity. Both Victor Frankenstein and the Creature suffer from isolation physically and mentally. Shelley emphasizes what the Creature lacks when he says, “ I learned and applied the words, fire, milk, bread, and woods. I learned also the names of the cottagers themselves. The youth and his companion had each of them several names, but the old man has only one, which is father. The girl was called sister, or Agatha; and the youth Felix, brother, or son”. (112) Shelley purposefully uses those words because they are exactly the first words a baby would learn, showing that the Creature is similar to a helpless infant. Clearly, Victor Frankenstein is the primary cause of his creature to feel rejected, lonely, and determined to seek revenge. Shelley has the Creature realize the rejection he feels from society when he says, “ I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endowed with a...
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...Frankenstein Human morality is a product of evolution by heritable variation and natural selection. It is fully part of the natural world but is none the worse for that – on the contrary. In the last sentence of On the Origin of Species, Darwin states that “there is grandeur in this view of life… on which endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.” The beautiful and wonderful forms include true moral agents who respond to real moral facts and who form a natural moral community. Their existence contributes to the grandeur of Darwin’s evolutionary view of life. What is a moral agent? A moral agent is a decision maker who chooses between right and wrong and is, therefore, morally responsible for his acts. In this essay I will argue that creature in Marry Shelly’s novel Frankenstein is not a moral agent. The monster in Marry Shelly’s novel Frankenstein is Victor Frankenstein's creation, assembled from old body parts and strange chemicals, spirited by the mysterious spark of life. He awakes eight feet tall and enormously strong but with the mind of a baby. Abandoned by his creator and confused, he tries to get accepted into society, only to be rejected. Looking at his reflection, he realizes his grotesqueness, a characteristic that hides his gentleness from society. He seeks revenge on his creator, killing Victor's younger brother. Later, after Victor destroys his work on the female monster, the monster murders Victor's best friend and...
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...Is Victor or his creature most deserving of sympathy? The theme of sympathy is used throughout the novel ‘Frankenstein’. Mary Shelley has used it in order for us as the reader to feel sorrow for both Victor Frankenstein and the monster. A reason why Mary Shelley used sympathy repeatedly could be connected to the fact that she had such a tough life, she had been surrounded by death and sadness; her mum died giving birth to her, 3 of her 4 children died, her half sister committed suicide and her sons first wife drowned herself. This pain and suffering that she has gone through her whole life is very similar to what Victor Frankenstein went through, and Shelley could have related parts of it about her. This is seen when she emphasizes the pain Victor feels for Elizabeth and William, when they are murdered by the monster. When the monster first comes to life, Frankenstein says “but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and the breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” this is the first point, where the reader sympathise for the monster because his creator, his “father” detests him, and neglects him, he receives no instruction or assistance at helping himself blend into a normal society. Later on in chapter 5, Victor meets up with his old friend Henry Clerval for the first time in ages, Henry comments on his health saying “I did not before remark how very ill you appear so thin and pale; and look as if you had been watching several nights” this makes...
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...different physical features, however all creatures have the same evil mindset. A monster is a being that damages and puts fear inside certain individuals. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a good example of how appearance does not show weather or not a creature is a monster or not. In the story, Victor Frankenstein tries to change nature by creating a powerful human being. The being seems, by all accounts, to be a monster. Victor gets to be so obsessed on working on his creation suddenly rejects it after being terrified at the monsters appearance. Victor is the real monster because of his desire for power, lack of respect for nature, and his stubbornness towards the monster in which he created. Due to Victor's requirement...
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...creature can be considered a “victim” since it implies isolation, oppression and loneliness, all of which the creature is affected by. Thus, the creature is a victim of Victor’s over-ambitious nature. His creation is brought about as a result of Frankenstein’s immense desire to create and “father a monster race”. The monster is a victim of circumstance and questions Victor, “did I request thee… to mold me Man?” Here, it is clear he is a victim since he has not asked for his creation and further rejection. Frankenstein refers to him as a “miserable wretch”, damning him from the start of his creation, calling him “hideous” and “deformed”. The monster has no control over his own life and how he is treated and is therefore a victim of Frankenstein’s thirst for knowledge. It can be argued that Frankenstein’s parents were significant in felicitating his ambitions. Frankenstein insinuates that his thirst for knowledge is due to his father’s lack of scientific knowledge as he say “My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child's blindness, added to a student's thirst for knowledge”. Frankenstein clearly blames his father for his failure and furthemore, for lacking as a father figure which may have led to Frankenstein’s rejection of his creation. While the creature is to...
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...decisions. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein demonstrates characters that through an obsessive desire for more knowledge ruin their own lives. Victor Frankenstein is a scientist, who creates a monster to life through his extensive knowledge of science, but the creature he creates brings terrible demise and Victor loses everything that was once close to him. The monster himself craves knowledge through his learning experience. He is fascinated by human nature and language and seeks to be a part of it. His desire to gain too much knowledge leads him to lose self control and destroys the lives of many people. Watson, similar to Victor, is an explorer who travels to the North Pole and chases after the idea of making a discovery. Watson serves as an example of being at risk for destruction, but after hearing about the deadly consequences of exploration he stops himself from making the same mistakes Victor did. The obsession of gaining too much knowledge causes a loss in self control and allows ones desires to take over, resulting in destruction. The desire of extensive knowledge is first seen through Victor Frankenstein. At the beginning of the novel, a young boy named Victor grows up in Geneva “deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge” (Shelley, 22) and to him the world was a secret which he desired to discover. His fascination in the secrets of the world drives him to study natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Ingolstadt. Victor begins to further study discoveries...
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