Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein begins with a series of letters Captain Robert Walton has written to his sister Margaret Saville. The letters express Walton’s aspirations for his upcoming voyage to the North Pole. Throughout four messages, Walton describes his frustrations and triumphs leading to his impending journey. His most heart wrenching grievance is his inability to find companionship. In each letter, Walton is progressively farther along in his journey, and, in the fourth and final letter, Walton and his men have been trapped in ice for several days when they encounter a stranger stranded at sea. The men welcome the stranger aboard the ship, and Walton personally sees to the man’s recovery. As the two men spend time together, Walton …show more content…
Painstaking loneliness is, ultimately, the root cause of the creature’s acts of aggression, need for revenge, and desperateness for companionship. A bulk of Frankenstein illustrates the life of Frankenstein’s creation after Victor turns away from him. The creature traverses the German countryside completely isolated from humanity and society. His journey leads him to the DeLacey family where he spends his days observing and assisting the family by doing tasks such as collecting wood (Shelley 99). There, his intelligence expands to new lengths. Living ignorantly in bliss, he is left to his own devices to understand and develop language. The creature is soon able to read well and speak eloquently, overcoming his abandonment. After the creature develops the ability to read, he is capable of interpreting the journal of his creator, Victor Frankenstein. Through the journal he finds tucked in the cloak he was wearing when he escaped Victor’s laboratory, the creature is made aware of his creation process and the intentions behind it (Shelley 117). It is through these writings that the creature discovers the cause of his loneliness. It is revealed to him that his creator, the one whom he most expected to accept his hideousness, has rejected him and deprived him of companionship. Even prior to his discovery of Victor’s journal the creature becomes aware of his loneliness and says, “But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched
This novel reflects Shelley’s own childhood, which consisted of her feeling obligated to rebel against her own father’s wishes and his choice for her marriage. Frankenstein is a way for Shelley to tell her own experiences with parental conflict and how she feels she was affected by her demanding father and the environment she grew up in, by comparing herself to Victor’s monster. Shelley analyzed her own characteristics, and the characteristics of her father, and placed them within Victor and the
The creature's violent behaviour causes him to never achieve the sympathy he desires and therefore never achieve mutual
Like a baby, Frankenstein’s creature was born innocent and inexperience of how society works. Neglected by his creator, the creature had no one to teach him, this caused him to become isolated. While wandering in the wilderness the creature came upon the De Lacey family. He does not approach them, instead he studies them and becomes accustom to their doings. He uses his isolation to educate himself and gain courage to meet the family. Aghast by the creature’s monstrous appearance, the De Lacey family fled away leaving the
Frankenstein’s creature was a large body that was comprised of many different human parts, in order to create a whole. The product of Victor Frankenstein’s experiment was this hideous creature that had been brought to life. The creature did not know of anything prior to his life, so he needed someone to help him understand. After Frankenstein had fled from his creation there was no one left for the monster to go to. He learned of some sensations and ideas, through experience in the beginning of his life; there was still much he had to learn from others. All of his attempts to speak with normal humans resulted in them seeing his unfortunate appearance, followed by either running from him or attacking him. All of this calamity might
One of the main characters in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is a nameless creature created in laboratory by Victor Frankenstein and abandoned by Victor right after its birth. The creature was left alone to learn by himself, to find food, to figure out how the world works. The creature is one of a kind, but he is alone and lonely. While isolated by his appearance he becomes driven by revenge, the creature is feared by everyone it meet, he is abandoned and hated even by its creator. And this loneliness and need for companionship, which he can never have, is the reason for the change from monster by appearance to monster by action.
Put into the world and forcefully learning to be an independent, and facing a crisis of purpose. After, he faces the task of filling the void of loneliness and fails. He fails when he tries to speak to the family. Also, when he fails he faced by violence from society due to his monstrous figure: this figure also enables him from even being able given the chance to profess his compassion and kindness . After that, he figures out that his only solution of content is to have a female in his image, but like all other situations, he was not enabled to granted even this wish. Putting him in the position of no longer needing to live, hence the creature life ceases with solitude and
After the creation of the creature, Frankenstein had abandoned him leaving him as ‘a poor, helpless, miserable wretch,’ (71) who was clueless about his sense and how to survive. When we found a farm he stayed there to gather food however ‘children shrieked, and one of the women fainted,’ upon seeing him in which some attacked him.(74) He later found a place to stay aside to the DeLacey family’s cottage, however he didn’t enter due to his last experience. He lived outside for months observing and learning. The creature learned knowledge of feelings. However this ‘increase of knowledge’ only made him discover ‘more clearly what a wretched outcast’ he was. (93) He was once again rejected which led his rage to increase towards his creator, Frankenstein, because he had created a monster who wasn’t accepted in society. (97) His first action was the killing of William because the creature had ‘sworn eternal revenge,’ upon Frankenstein.(102) This is significant because after learning what society consider ‘normal’ he started to have an inferiority complex leading to build rage towards his creator for his deformity . Seek of revenge is further emphasized when he asked Frankenstein for a woman companion and is denied of one.(121) Once Frankenstein had agree to create a companion he then rethinks about the negative effects which later causes him to destroy the female creature. This builds on the creature’s rage leading him to threatened Frankenstein indicating he will be there with him on his wedding-night. (139) On the day after of Frankenstein’s wedding he noticed that he held in his arms ‘had ceased to be the Elizabeth,’ who he had ‘loved and cherished.’ (145) She was killed by the creature as an act of revenge because Frankenstein had denied him to a female companion. In the end, the creature cried out ‘I shall die and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be
Frankenstein and various other characters plagued the monster with the feeling of self-consciousness. This feeling never goes away and the creature acts out in rage as a result of this horrible feeling (Mellor Abandonment 77). Along with the feelings of self-consciousness, the creature also felt a great deal of loneliness,
Victor Frankenstein created life, a monster that was born into this world with no purpose, and no one to love. He did not even have a name, he was called a monster from the start. Just like a normal human baby, he came to life not knowing anything, and had to learn from his surroundings. Just like a person, he watched and learned from others, and tried to understand the world and the people in it. From that, the monster understood that he just wants to find a life for himself, and not be viewed as an evil monster, but there are many things that are preventing that. In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the author portrays Frankenstein’s monster as a friend through details in his character and his outlook on life.
Walton's letters to his sister at the beginning of the story foreshadow the feelings and motivations that Frankenstein experiences when he first discovers the "the cause of generation and life." Both Walton and Frankenstein are adventures and obsessive with
Throughout the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley, the creature is subjected to countless acts of violence and rejection. For a monster to develop, one must have been formerly exploited either by an individual or their society. The creature is not only a physical product of science, but his atrocious behavior is also an explicit result of Victor’s actions toward him. The creature was not born a monster, but slowly morphed into one as he experiences violence and rejection from his society.
Contrary to Frankenstein, the creature does not choose his isolation, but it was immediately chosen for him. Society and especially Frankenstein excludes the creature from being accepted, based on his looks and his little ability to act as a normal human being. Within the novel he states, “What chiefly struck me was the gentle manners of these people; and I longed to join them, but dared not. I remembered too well the treatment I had suffered the night before from the barbarous villagers, and resolved, whatever course of conduct I might hereafter think it right to pursue, that for the present I would remain quietly in my hovel, watching, and endeavouring to discover the motives which influenced their actions.” (Shelley, pg. 110) The creature is aware of this exclusion and through those words a reader can know for sure. The negative effects of the creature’s isolation begins to show within the story through his horrifying acts like murder. Isolation develops to be a motif in the story, which helps a reader truly see that this is a huge similarity between both Frankenstein and his creature.
Alienation, considered a key element in monstrosity, affects the creature so much to a point where revenge is his only solitude. This
Frankenstein's creation is a complex character whose true motives cannot be determined easily. Although one cannot excuse his actions, they should certainly not be viewed out of context. The creature is exposed to the painful reality of loneliness from the moment of his creation. "I had worked hard for nearly two years," Victor states, "for the sole
At the first glance, Victor Frankenstein and his Creature appear as complete opposites with little to nothing in common. Victor seems intelligent and humane while the Creature’s actions insinuate that he possesses uneducated and monstrous qualities. After becoming more familiar with the characters and their actions, the pair still seem to have a few differences; however, they share some key characteristics. Finally, after analyzing Frankenstein and the Creature’s personalities and habits, it becomes obvious that the two experience a shocking amount of affinities towards one another. These similarities include loneliness and persistence. Other more specific examples involve their inclination towards playing God and their hunger for knowledge. Demonstrated by the many examples provided throughout the novel, the identifiable common traits between Frankenstein and the Creature continuously develop as the reader obtains a greater understanding of their monstrous personalities.