The Role of Sickness in the novel Frankenstein
A nasty cough and a fever to match strikes again. Everyone catches that routine seasonal cold, what an inconvenience. The consequences force one to miss out on social activities and work. While this might seem a privilege at the time, eventually sickness starts to feel like a punishment. All too familiar with illness, Victor Frankenstein, the main character in Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein, struggles to overcome this hardship. Unfortunate stressful events cause Victor to fall extremely ill, separating him from society and his responsibilities. The cause of Victor’s sickness correlates with the stress and worry he experiences due to the creation of the monster, while sickness foreshadows tragic future events throughout the novel.
Victor uses sickness as a cover or “safety blanket” in order to escape the guilt and stress due to the creation of the monster. Confined to his sick bed, Victor’s family and friends do not expect him to take on any responsibilities or work. Sickness allows one to take a reprieve from society, and provides a universal excuse to stay at home, and take time for oneself until one feels up and well to face the world again. Victor struggles to comprehend the death and destruction his creation leaves behind, when he falls ill, time passes uninterrupted and Victor’s life and surroundings do not change. Consumed in his studies, and obsessed with the thought of creating the monster, Victor allows himself to
Victor Frankenstein in the book Frankenstein faces many terrible situations and has to face many consequences for trying to play God’s role in creating life. Victor seen and dealt with many situations as a young boy that will lead to his madness and obsession with science. Victor has always been intrigued with science and life ever since he was a boy. He studied natural science endlessly trying to master how to create a creature that could sustained life. When Victor finally creates his creature, he becomes disgusted with how it turns out. Victor runs from his creation failing to teach him any social or moral qualities. The creature haunts Victor killing many of his family and friends. Victor will try to run from the many problems he has caused. This causes Victor’s misery throughout the book. Victor becomes the true murderer in the book for trying to play God and create life with science.
"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.
He is in constant refusal of responsibility, and ends up essentially plaguing not only his life, but also the lives around him. After constructing and animating the creature, he’s in a flux never ending negative emotions. The creation gets turned into a monster both physically and mentally. Frankenstein describes the horrors that come along with scientific experimentation, and the pursuit of science unavoidably leading to tragedy. The novel presents insights that are just as valid today as when the novel was written in the 19th century. Dr. Frankenstein makes a scientific breakthrough in his creation of the monster, but at what cost? This novel shows us the dangers of attempting to find something we are simply unprepared to manage. Victor’s urges to truly learn the secret of making life completely blinds him to the consequences of achieving such a feat. This book also shows that our ethical (or unethical) actions have the potential to hurt not only ourselves, but also others around us.
Victor begins to possess an unnatural drive in his quest for knowledge where he begins intense study and experimentation, “These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale from study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement” eventually isolating himself from his friends and family. As the seasons passed Victor’s obsession with his studies continued to grow, “And the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time” highlighting how his ambition is a fatal flaw, neglecting the outside world and his loved ones. Victor’s ambition to research and attempt to create life drains him of health and sensibility, “Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree” which is ironic to the goal he wishes to achieve. Shelly’s use of irony illuminates how Victor’s obsessive ambition has become a fatal flaw.
Part of your identity has become snagged by perceived insults and threats to the way you see yourself, causing inner conflict or escalating existing problems. Knowing this, we can conclude that Victor’s battle of his own insecurities led to a series of even bigger problems. To make this claim, the reader needs to know about the Victor’s character, but more so how terrifying he can be. The reader does not yet know the capacity of Victor’s love for Elizabeth. In turn, the reader does not how much regret festers inside of Victor. He suffers his own internal despise for his own monstrous creation. My topic of my essay is the numerous amounts of about conflict Victor had faced. The four topics I will be addressing are Person
In every previous illness, Victor had family and friends to motivate him to stop the monster. “The final straw is when the monster kills Elizabeth on Victor’s and her wedding night. After all these killings Victor devotes his life to destroying his creation which eventually leads to his own demise” (Muse Union). The stress caused by the death of all his family and friend’s results in Victor falling into his final illness. He falls into this illness after the monster falls in the ice, and feels the guilt of the life the creature has constantly taken around him. He uses illness as a way to rest and avoid having to follow the monster. Victor finally talks to Walton and releases some guilt that has been inside of Victor for years. Novel Guide stated, “sickness serves as an escape from life’s harsh reality. It also seems to foreshadow horrible future events.” The sickness Victor feels is unlike any he has had before; this is because Victor will not recover. Illness has come to foreshadow future events including his death. Death for Victor is the ultimate sickness. Victor is finally free from the never ending illness that has caused only pain and suffering.
In this excerpt from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a lot of power and emotion is put into the writing. This selection is an important moment in the story, and the author uses many rhetorical devices to capture her readers and put them in the scene. By using a sense of parallelism, imagery, and intense description, along with pacing helps put the audience into Victor’s experience of horror.
The novel Frankenstein, tells the life of Victor from his early childhood to adulthood. It follows him on the highs and lows of his life. In the novel, Victor begins the construction of a creature. He believes this creation will be a wonderful being. However, the monster begins to haunt Victor’s life with his own problems.
Shelley explains how Victor has a great mental turmoil after he indirectly caused the death of people who were close to him by the actions he took to create the monster. Shelley’s description of Victor’s feelings show the deprivation of hope and fear in his soul and the emphasises the pain in which he was indirectly the cause of. Victor not only caused his own mental illness, but he also caused his own physical illness. Victor makes himself physically sick by his actions during the creation of his monster. Victor’s work unintentionally causes himself to decline in health and become vulnerable to illnesses. “When Victor is working on his experiment, he cannot love: he ignores his family, even his fiance Elizabeth, and takes no pleasure in the beauties of nature. Moreover, he becomes physically… ill, subject to nervous fevers”(Weiner 83). Victor is shown to focus directly on his work, causing him to forget most of the outside world and not be influenced by forces that usually comfort and heal him. His work makes Victor subject to nervous fevers, causing himself to become sick more often and need help from family and friends more often. Although the process of creating the monster was physically taxing on Victor, the end product caused him even more pain. The creation of the creature impaired
Although Victor’s family was one of the most distinguished of the republic of Geneva and his parents were possessed by the “very spirit of kindness / And indulgence,” (Shelley 39) his days were not filled with happiness. His troubled past started the day Elizabeth caught scarlet fever, delaying his departure for Ingolstadt. Although Victor’s mother, Caroline, was able to cure her, she died in her place. The destruction of a dear bond by an irreparable evil surely would have caused anyone to suffer, but as time came, Caroline’s death became “rather an / Indulgence than a necessity” (Shelley 45) to Victor; it was nothing more than something that delayed his departure for Ingolstadt. Because Victor is in a situation where he no longer has control, his psyche must carry the burden
The novel Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley starts off with a man named Robert Walton who meets Victor Frankenstein. Robert retells Victor’s story to his sister in a series of letters. Victor Frankenstein is an alchemist who creates a monster out of human body parts. Victor then goes through many events that put his loved ones in danger because of his creations. In the story, Mary Shelley hints many types of themes.
In Frankenstein, sickness was a constant issue with Victor primarily when he faced challenges or troubles. Sickness has always been an efficient way to temporarily remove yourself from society. Whether it is to keep people from being sick or just to get away from everyone, it will always be the best excuse to isolate yourself. Due to the fact that Victor only becomes sick during traumatic events, it is thought that he just did this to escape from the issues he faced. The issues always related back to his creation and the responsibilities that Victor never picked up on.
When Victor traveled to Ingolstadt to attend the university, he delved deeper into the sciences, specifically chemistry. Resulting from the profound involvement, and concentration Victor devoted to his studies, he began to lose contact with family, friends, and later, his professors. Victor labored arduously over his experiments and “two years passed in this manner, during which I paid no visit to Geneva” (Shelley 55). It became apparent that Victor’s research consumed him; his commitment to science eliminated the opportunity and will for social endeavors, or even communication with his family. If Victor were to encounter a problematic outcome with his studies, which would soon occur, he would have no prospect of receiving help. Although the effect of isolation was weighing down on Victor’s sanity, he was not the sole recipient of this loneliness. Victor’s experiments produced a monster, and Victor neglected his responsibility as a creator and left his creation to its own devices. The monster suffered from the symptoms of a solitary lifestyle, similar to the one led by Victor himself. Ultimately, the scientist realizes the hideousness of the result of his experiment and abruptly abandons the monster. The monster quickly becomes deadly to those surrounding Victor and he realizes he must pursue and destroy his creation. Victor’s health rapidly deteriorated during his pursuit of the