Analyzing The Novel 'Frankenstein' By Mary Shelley

Quote: He stated “I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe…..I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation–deep, dark, deathlike solitude.”(Page 88).

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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

We react with ambivalence to this question because we have been exposed to both sides of the story, which is a rarity in most cases. Shelley represents the creature as truly monstrous and evil through the eyes of Victor Frankenstein, which gives readers the opportunity to view Frankenstein as the hero. It is only when we read the creature’s account that we began to feel both sympathy and even empathy for the struggles he has encountered. The creature never asked to be born and continually suffers at the hands of other throughout the novel. It is hard not to feel sympathy with someone who is so childlike and “new” to the world. Especially when the creature cries out in agony: “‘Cursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God in pity made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of your’s, more horrid from its very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested’” (Shelley, 91). The creature also goes on to say: “‘Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?’” (Shelley, 95). How could one not feel sympathy for someone who hated themselves? Humans have experienced such feelings of loneliness and isolation. The creature even says that Satan, of all people, had friends, but he is so hideous that he is utterly alone in the world. All

Man changes all the time. His emotions, state in life, body figure and even peace of mind can change in a matter of moments. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, one of the themes expressed repeatedly is the mutability of the state of man. Victor Frankenstein emotions and states of life change many times in this novel. Mary Shelley uses Victor Frankenstein to show the audience that the only thing that does not change is the fact that human beings are always changing. Some of these changes come by impulse other changes may come by changes in the surrounding environment.

In this story, it talks about a man who lost some people in his life, including his mother to a terrible disease. What he intended to do was create something that would bring her back to him. The book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and the movie “Frankenstein” have many similarities like: characters, plots, conflicts, and so on that will be stated in this essay. There are a great deal of differences, more than there are similarities. Reading the book and watching the movie are very important so the audience can understand and discover new things that are alike and different, because not all authors and directors will create the same thing identical to the other. They will make changes to where people will want to learn more about the movie

The book was written by Mary Shelley in 1817 and portrays her life by what happened to her and to her family. The original movie was made in 1931 and it tells the story of the monster and Frankenstein but has its similarities and differences. There are not to many similarities between the book and original movie. The main similarity is that there is a monster. The monster is created by human body parts and sewn together with a brain that is alive and he uses it to create life.

The women in Frankenstein were pure, lifeless and innocent. Elizabeth stands up for Justine’s innocence but cannot prevent her execution. For both Victor and the monster, woman were the last thing they would ask for help, providing comfort and acceptance. For Victor, Elizabeth takes away his guilty conscience. The monster choses female of his kind to feel his awful existence. Both end up destroying the other’s love interest, making woman’s status from object of desire to object of revenge, which does not give women the opportunity to act on their own.

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

Introduction: Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is a book with a deep message that touches to the very heart. This message implies that the reader will not see the story only from the perspective of the narrator but also reveal numerous hidden opinions and form a personal interpretation of the novel. One of its primary statements is that no one is born a monster and a “monster” is created throughout socialization, and the process of socialization starts from the contact with the “creator”. It is Victor Frankenstein that could not take the responsibility for his creature and was not able to take care of his “child”. Pride and vanity were the qualities that directed Victor Frankenstein to his discovery of life: “...So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein-more, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation”[p.47]. He could not cope with this discovery and simply ignored it. The tragedy of Victor Frankenstein and the tragedy of his creature is the same – it is the tragedy of loneliness and confronting the world, trying to find a place in it and deserve someone’s love. The creature would have never become a monster if it got the love it strived for. Victor Frankenstein would have never converted his creature into a monster if he knew how to love and take responsibility for the ones we bring to this world.