Analysis Of Mary Shelley 's ' Frankenstein '

"A Hermit is simply a person to whom society has failed to adjust itself." (Will Cuppy). In the gothic novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley we follow the life of Victor Frankenstein in 18th century Germany. Shelley displays a recurring theme of isolation and how it drives once good people to do terrible things. If civilization does not adjust itself to a creature of any kind they will be forced into isolation and ultimately self destruction.

Every work is a product of its time. Indeed, we see that in Frankenstein, like in the world which produced its author, race, or the outward appearances on which that construct is based, determines much of the treatment received by those at all levels of its hierarchy. Within the work, Mary Shelley, its author, not only presents a racialized view of its characters, but further establishes and enforces the racial hierarchy present and known to her in her own world. For the few non-European characters, their appearance, and thus their standing in its related hierarchy, defines their entrances into the narrative. For the Creature, this occurs on the ices of the Artic, when, “atop a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a mile;” Walton and his men perceived, “a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature.” (Shelley 13) Shelley clarifies, even this early in her novel, the race of its principal Other as soon after the intrepid adventurers rescue its namesake, Victor Frankenstein, who, Shelley clarifies, “was not, as the other traveller seemed to be, a savage inhabitant of some undiscovered island, but an European.” (Shelley 14) Later, closer examination of the Creature reveals a visage and figure of near unimaginable disfigurement, with a “shrivelled complexion,” and yellow skin which “scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath.” (Shelley 35) This could be contrasted directly

Alienation is a product of society’s inherently discriminatory bias, catalyzed by our fear of the unknown in the realm of interpersonal conduct. Mary Shelley, in her novel, Frankenstein, dissects society’s unmerited demonization of individuals who defy—voluntarily or involuntarily—conventional norms. Furthermore, through her detailed parallel development of Frankenstein and his monster, Shelley personifies the tendency to alienate on the basis of physical deformity, thereby illustrating the role of the visual in the obfuscation of morality.

Shelley addresses romantic conventions in Victor to convey his loss of identity. Victor is impatient and restless when constructing the creation, so much, that he does not think about it’s future repercussions. One of the great paradoxes that Shelley’s novel depicts is giving the monster more human attributes than to it’s creator [p. 6 - Interpretations]. This is true as the monster seeks an emotional bond, but Victor is terrified of it’s existence. The monster later reveals, “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurred at and kicked and trampled on [Shelley, p. 224].” Victor’s lack of compassion is rooted from the inability to cope with his reality. He distances himself from others and is induced with fainting spells [Shelley, p. 59]. From this, the nameless creature exemplifies Victor’s attempt to abandon his creation to escape his responsibilities. His creation is described as, ‘wretched devil’ and ‘abhorred monster,’ eliciting that the unobtainable, pitied identity [Shelley, p. 102]. The act of not naming the creature reveals Victor as hateful, and unnaturally disconnected to his own created victim.

While in this stage, one is (supposed to be happy with their accomplishments and live a productive life). The person will (feel no guilt or remorse for past events), however, this is not the case for Victor. Society (encourages people to live a happy life and to be successful), living a positive life and contributing to the society. Although society wants individuals to live happy lives and view their past as successful, Victor holds onto the guilt of his creation. He lives in the past and spend the rest of his life, after losing Elizabeth, traveling to the ends of the earth to destroy the monster. Victor focuses more on revenge than his own happiness and inner-peace. He holds onto the guilt until the second he dies; looks back and regrets the state he is in now.

Although Frankenstein is a fictional story, I think in many ways it is representative of Mary Shelley personal views in her everyday life. Mary Shelley was raised by her father after her mother passed and because of that they always had a rocky relationship even after her father remarried. Mary fell in love with one of her father’s political followers, Percy Shelley and they got married although her father did not approve of their relationship because of the age difference. Throughout their relationship, they faced many obstacles that made it hard for their relationship to work, but it did. This aspect of her relationship is show through Elizabeth in the novel because it shows how hard women will work to make a relationship work even when

In Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, the creation, made from scraps of corpses, was built by Victor Frankenstein, a man fascinated and obsessed with the knowledge of life. Following the creation’s rouse, Victor immediately abandons him with no desire on keeping or teaching his new being. Because of his lack of nourishment and direction “growing up”, the creation goes through a process of self-deception. He endures a period of deceit by believing that he is a normal human being like everyone around him. But as time progresses, he learns to accept how he is alone in this world and disconnected with everyone. Because of the creation’s lack of guidance and isolation, he grows up feeling unwanted.

Before Victor goes off to college, his mother dies which leaves him distraught. Subsequently he became infatuated with death and the idea of bringing life back. He said, "To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death" ( Shelley Chtr 4). Slowly, he became a monster engulfed in his own subconscious with the help of his studies in science.

John Locke is one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and is famously known for asserting that all humans have natural rights. He also believed that humans are born with clean slates, and that the environment humans grow in, especially at a young age, has massive influences on aspects of their personalities, ideals, and motivations. Shelley was most definitely influenced by this claim when writing Frankenstein. As the reader, we can see the monster that Victor Frankenstein creates grow up alone, without guidance, and be formed by the experiences it is put through while trying to survive. Its emotions and beliefs throughout the book were merely a result of its experiences as it encounters the harsh reality of the world. Mary

Most come to read “Frankenstein” primarily for the monster, and his portion of the story makes him

Dictionary of Narratology). Because if we identify the character of Victor start from his happy childhood, university environment, but since he created the human-like, the complexity of his life getting worse and worse. He tried to struggle and beated down the monster to reconcile his mistake, and went back to his hometown to safe his family but ironically he couldn’t.

The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley tells a strange and tragic tale of a mere human named Victor creating life and the consequences of this act. Throughout the novel, we see Mary Shelley using Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the monster emphasize a theme of loneliness and the effect it has on a person. It seems that humans have a persistent need for social interaction and acceptance. Mary Shelly shows this to us with the interactions of Victor, Robert and the monster. Throughout the novel, we see how isolation serves as the starting grounds of conflict, particularly in the case of the monster.

Victor Frankenstein goes all throughout the book to busy doing things for him and no one else as if he had the power of God to choose all the right things for him but wrong for other people. God in a lot of religions acts as someone who will be by your side and always with you but Frankenstein creates Creature and then abandons him and never worries about him. Creature gets judged so frequently and feels so unwanted that it takes a blind man to actually show Creature what love is. Also Victor could create Creature but refuses to create a companion for Creature and why does he have the right to choose to create life or not? Frankenstein has the chance to save a few lives if he would have told the truth but he does not and that shows why he fails at portraying a good form of God. Victor will fail at trying to act like God and it will all come back to him.

In the nineteenth century gothic novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses numerous allusions within her novel that can easily be interpreted by the reader. These allusions make it easier for readers to understand the characters and compare their circumstances throughout the story. The most significant and most used was from John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. “…Paradise Lost stands alone in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries atop the literary hierarchy, and Milton’s epic is clearly rooted in the history of Puritanism and in the bourgeois ideal of the individual, the ‘concept of the person as a relatively autonomous self-contained and distinctive universe’” (Lamb 305). This book has numerous parallels that readers can easily interpret to Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein and his monster can both be identified with several characters from Paradise Lost. Among these characters are Adam, Eve, Satan, and God. Paradise Lost is even mentioned in chapter 15 after the monster that Victor creates reads the epic as if it was a history book. The Creature explains to Frankenstein, “But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting” (Shelley 116). He is able to relate himself and the situations that he goes through in his life to this epic. Shelley’s use of

Women in Frankenstein are portrayed as passive and are seen to be supporters and nurturers. Victor contemplates creating a companion for his monster because he feels like a man needs a women to care and look after just as the women in his life tried to do with him. The creature is in search for compassion and feels that he will find it with a woman. 2. Victor becomes ill multiple times as following confrontations with his creation. Victor uses his illness to avoid the problems and his creature. Ultimately though, Victor’s illnesses make things worse and have the problems carry on for a while instead of handling the situation. 3. All the monster really needs and wants is attention and affection like any other. The audience of the book can somewhat