...happening right before us, the need to see our exponential growth through a different lens becomes a necessity. But then how does Frankenstein by Mary Shelley written over two centuries ago, still manage to have a lasting impression on today’s society? Even though 250 years on, Frankenstein still manages to be relevant and pertinent to this very day. The reason being is that Frankenstein becomes more than synonymous with “monster” and “crazy inventor” but is in fact a cautionary tale of the monstrosity capable by man. It’s the universal themes of Frankenstein such as what it means to be human, medical ethics and the darker natured tendency of man to achieve ultimate glory. The events that occur in the text stem from Victor Frankenstein’s want and desire for glory. Dr Victor Frankenstein embarks on a futile quest to create and sustain life where he constructs his nameless monster from various dead matter. Here is where the nameless monster comes to life through being electrified into a conscious being. However, when the experiment is finished, Frankenstein is petrified by what he sees and flees the scene. However, for Frankenstein, time and space are unable to separate himself from his creation where the text delves into a cold and thrilling...
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...Frankenstein: The First Modern Monster Story When we hear Frankenstein the image that many of us think of today is that of a mindless monster with bolts in his neck who wishes to terrorize anyone who crosses his path. This image is far different from that of the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In Shelley’s novel Frankenstein’s monster is smart, caring, and he posses near super human strength and speed. Frankenstein is thought to be heavily influenced by of many of the places and events in Shelly’s life. For example many of the scientific themes are thought to be influenced by the scientific revolution which was being analyzed during the romanticism period which is when Frankenstein was written. Frankenstein is often considered to be the first modern monster story because it deals with many modern issues, it has many differences from earlier monster stories, and because it is written using a modern romanticism writing style. The most prevalent modern issue dealt with in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the boundaries between religion and science. In the novel Victor uses science to create life which is something that only God can do. Frankenstein’s monster compares himself to Adam and Victor to God when he says, “Remember, that I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.”(Shelley 66), this quote is an example of Shelley relating religion and science. During the period of Enlightenment science...
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...Frankenstein Critical Reading Portfolio Section I: Significance of Title The title is significant because Frankenstein is the man who had created something beautiful that no one else has ever done before. One may think that the title Frankenstein sounds like something destructive. In this, Frankenstein symbolizes God and a parent to the monster because he saw himself as creating life from scratch and creating something that has never been done by anyone else. He sees himself as a parent because to him, the monster is his son. Even though the monster isn’t genetically Frankenstein’s son, he still sees him as that because he created him and invested so much time into creating him. Section II: Author The author of this book is Mary Shelley. In this story, Mary Shelley clearly expresses that the monster had trouble getting to know people because of his looks. One may say that her major theme was appearances because of how she puts the monster into talking about the way he looks and the way he sees other people. This is expressed a lot throughout the story. Another thing that one may have noticed is that there weren’t really any mother figures in this book and she kind of made it a male based story. The reason why one may point this out is because of how Victor creates a “son” without a wife in the picture and how the story goes on with this. Section III: Plot The plot exposition is within the letters written between Walton and his sister. They are telling the story of Victor...
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...characteristics that has caused them to be the object of nightmares and interest? If so, are they truly what should be feared? One of the most iconic monster novels of the early modern period, published at a time when technological innovation was becoming immensely prominent is Frankenstein. Contrary to popular belief, the titular character, Frankenstein, is the name of Victor Frankenstein, the doctor who...
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...novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley demonstrates aspects of Romanticism is two major ways. The first is through the way Shelley emphasizes and idealizes nature and describes nature as therapeutic (specifically to Victor Frankenstein). The second is Shelley’s emphasis on expressing emotion and how feelings and intuition were more important than rationality during the Romantic. Nature is heavily idealized in the novel and Shelley often uses nature as therapy. Both Frankenstein and the creature find joyous solitude in the purity and tranquility of nature. Each time Frankenstein endures a horrific experience in this novel, Shelley immediately places Frankenstein in a natural setting that causes him joy and replenishes him. Immediately after creating the creature, Frankenstein falls gravely ill and is nursed back to health by Henry Clerval and friends. Once he had recovered, Frankenstein exclaims that, “It was a divine spring, and the season contributed greatly to my convalescence. I felt also sentiments of joy and affection arrive in my bosom; my gloom disappeared, and in short time I became as cheerful as...
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...Shelley's Frankenstein, (Topic) Victor has two doppelgängers, one being Clerval and the other being his creation (Argument) because the monster is an embodiment of his worse self who doesn't take responsibility and Clerval is his better self who lives without guilt, which is reflected in their relationship to nature, and view of self. (Reason) Victor Frankenstein...
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...Diem-Chi Tran Dr. Ingrao HUMA 1301.002 November 22, 2013 Row C-2 The Frankenstein Complex: Killer Robots or Metal Friends? In it’s fifty years of age, the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics continue to capture the imagination of the general public, but with this growing interest, it also engendered a great deal of fear and skepticism. Hollywood and the media exacerbate the problem while some well-known authors and scientist lend credence to it. This fear isn’t anything new and didn’t just appear with the creation of these mechanized humanoids. Even reaching as far back as the folktales of golems to the monstrous birth of Frankenstein’s creature, humankind has feared the rise of an army of evil manmade creations that banned together to overthrow humanity. Asimov called this fear the Frankenstein Complex. With so many amazing possibilities that came with the new technological era, Asimov believed that the creation of robots and androids would benefit humanity so he formed the Three Laws of Robotics to try and calm the fears that boiled amongst the general public. He states that first and foremost, “a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm” (Asimov 37). The second law states, “a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders conflict with the First Law” (Asimov 37). And the third law is that “a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with...
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...Feminism within the Novel and the Creation of Frankenstein In “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley, one can undoubtedly see how the female characters have less importance than the male characters. The reason these sex differences in status occurred because of the period that she wrote the novel. Shelley, during the first half of the nineteenth century, was writing in a time in which a woman “was conditioned to think she needed a man’s help” (Smith 275). In “Frankenstein”, Mary Shelley devotes three male characters to narrate the story, Victor Frankenstein, Robert Walton, and Frankenstein’s creation. No woman throughout the entire novel speaks directly as the three narrators do. Mary Shelley also constructs the story to follow the main character,...
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...person who puts out their flame will be left with nothing to drive them, and a person who feeds too much into their flame will become overtaken by the fire. In both the novel, “Frankenstein”, and the play, “Macbeth”, the title characters find themselves in the latter situation, eventually becoming too engulfed in their own fire to extinguish the blaze. In both books, Frankenstein and Macbeth feed too much into their ambition, leading them to pursue things with deadly consequences. While both books feature characters whose ultimate downfall is a result of their ambition,...
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...Society creates unspoken rules and standards of living and those who do not adhere to the rules are considered monsters. It is for this reason that the responsibility falls on society for the creation of monsters since society is responsible for creating the rules and standards in the first place. In literature, and the modern day, it is the creation and expression of superficial standards that creates monsters. In the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein attempts to create a man but the man that he creates turns out to be hideous in appearance. The only differences between the man created by Frankenstein and a man created in the typical sense of birth are (1) the manner by which the men are brought into the world, and (2) the...
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...Prompt 2: Victor Frankenstein is more alienated than the monster he creates. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, written during the Romantic period, tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, whose hunger for knowledge of the scientific universe drives him to create a human monster. Throughout the novel, Frankenstein describes his experiences with the monster to Robert Walton as horrifying and frightening. Shelley successfully demonstrates the Romantic concept of focusing on the self through the nature of the monster and Frankenstein, as well as through nature itself. Though both the monster and Frankenstein elicit forms of isolation, Frankenstein’s memories and experiences with his family and decision in toying with science and nature proves him more alienated than the monster he creates. Frankenstein’s memories and experiences with his family prove him more alienated than the monster. When Frankenstein receives a letter from his cousin, Elizabeth, she writes: “My dearest Cousin, you have been ill, very ill, and even the constant letters of dear Kind Henry are not sufficient to reassure me on your account” (Shelley 48). Elizabeth expresses concern for Frankenstein’s health, giving him a sense of love and care. Because Frankenstein holds a special connection to Elizabeth, someone he loves dearly, the thought of losing her terrifies him. Frankenstein’s bond to Elizabeth makes the monster’s murdering of her overwhelming and horrifying...
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...In this exquisite piece of literature named “Frankenstein”, Mary Shelley depicts Victor Frankenstein, born into a wealthy Genevan family and audacious scientist with a desire for discovery, creating a freak of nature we come to know as Frankenstein’s Monster all through the story-telling framing structure of letters by a man named Captain Robert Walton. Obsessed with old theory books of recreating natural wonders, Frankenstein studied endlessly for decades until he went off to college in Germany. During college, he excelled at his science classes while on the side partaking in several hidden studies to hide the grief of losing his mother shortly after leaving her to go to college. These experiments consisted of delving into the practice of transferring living matter to non-living objects. After concluding with plausible data, Victor Frankenstein took it to the next level; he attempted to create a humanoid figure. In order to fit the entirety of the necessary elements for this being to live as a proper functioning human being, Frankenstein resorted to making him freakishly large and proportionally gigantic. Nevertheless, he had succeeded. The being was alive! Since, the question of technology going overboard as...
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...1818, by an “anonymous” author, Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus has inspired numerous adaptations, remakes and parodies across different literary genres. Reprinted again in 1831, this time with an introduction written by Mary Shelley acknowledging her authorship, Frankenstein through its discrediting of science and the omnipotence of nature, confirms ands challenges our own habitual understandings of the world around us. The habitual understanding I will be focusing on is western hegemonic rationalism and the dominance of science as the ruler and explainer of my universe in comparison to the earlier more romantic ideology of Shelley’s time. Frankenstein also carries a warning about ambition. In a society that believes ambition to be a good thing, Shelley attempts to revel catastrophic consequences for humans over come with the quest for glory and science’s obsessive and overly ambitious nature. Western hegemonic ideal is the cultural identity that has conditioned me, becoming habitual, normal and routine. However, Shelley was privileged as she was writing at the beginning of the scientific enlightenment era, and could therefore identify what would be lost if science and technology were to usurp the position of God, nature and fate. Art, emotions, passion, suffering, humility etc were to be restricted into liminal spaces, creating a world not unlike Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World. Romantic philosophies have been endorsed in Frankenstein through the downfall of Victor...
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...ESSAY CONFRONTATION IN FRANKENSTEIN. Frankenstein is a novel that was written in 1818 by Mary Shelley. It deals with a young science student named Victor Frankenstein, who gives birth to a being in a scientific experiment. The novel revolves around the conflict between two characters : Victor Frankenstein and the creature, who are linked in a complex, multidimensional relationship. In fact, the creature and its creator become enemies the first time they meet and battle against each other through the entire story. Moreover, it is easily noticeable that their confrontation has several aspects to it. First, we will study their confrontation to each other through the story. Then, we will see how these two characters are involved in a confrontation with the human kind. Finally, we will ponder on the way the characters and their conflicts mirror the confrontation between nature and science. First of all, by reading Mary Shelley's novel, we can see that Frankenstein and the creature are struggling with each other until the end of the book. Actually, we have on one hand the Frankenstein monster who is dependent on his creator because he is the only man with enough knowledge to create another of his kind. On the other hand, we have Frankenstein who is dependent on his creation, because it is physically stronger than he and able to murder his family and friends. For these reasons, each of these two characters is able to blackmail the other, and so they...
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...How does the creature elicit sympathy during his narrative in Volume II? In Frankenstein, Mary Shelly allows the creature to share his story of abandonment and sorrow in order to elicit sympathy from both Victor Frankenstein and the reader. The creature manipulates his tale, describing each event and circumstance that culminates in the murder of William, so that his creator – Victor Frankenstein, will grant his request for a female companion. The creature illustrates his pain and loneliness from the moment of his ‘birth’ in the beginning pages of Chapter III; we see his growth in consciousness; much like a newborn. His inability to express himself through words is poignant as the reader is witness to the frustration the creature feels. His innocence is clear as human needs that torment him like “hunger and thirst”, cannot be quenched as his is unaware how and has to rely on his primitive instincts rather that having the luxury of being taken care of. This early pain and abandonment are told of, in an effort to make Frankenstein regret his decision to leave his creation and therefore fulfill the creatures request. The attachment the creature forms with the DeLacy family evokes sympathy from the reader for numerous reasons. Firstly it is a one sided relationship – they are the first people the creature forms a bond with when in fact they have no idea about his existence. Secondly when they do find out they are disgusted by his presence due to his unconventional looks....
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