Archetypes In Frankenstein Essay

The theme throughout the novel Frankenstein is archetypal. Throughout the novel, each character develops a common theme or archetype to help the audience better understand or relate to them. All main characters throughout the novel fit into an archetype. From Robert Walton to the Creature, they all follow a certain list of characteristics attributed to their character. Robert Walton is the novel's hero or general good guy.

Friends will determine the direction and quality of your life. Loneliness is a battle that all people will once face at a certain point in their life; it is how they handle it that determines the outcome of that battle. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein loneliness is the most significant and prevailing theme throughout the entire novel. Shelley takes her readers on a wild journey that shows how loneliness can end in tragedy.

As the thunder was rumbling over the immense dark mansion you could hear a maniacal laugh filling the hallways. This laugh was coming from Dr. Frankenstein as he was creating a horrid monster that would soon drive away the entire town. The monster was enormous and had a deep roar that could fill the streets. The monster had no compassion and would soon kill everything in his way and no one I repeat no one could stop him no matter what they did. As you could imagine this beast is a horrid creature that would do the unspeakable and you might be able to predict hi future.

Term/Definition Example from Text: Brief Explanation As to How Example Creates Meaning in the Text Page # Archetype-a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches. “I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay?” Victor, a prime example of the Mad Scientist archetype, stops for nothing as he attempts to reach his goals at the expense of his own health and body.

Every two seconds a child becomes an orphan. Many of these children turn to prostitution and crime; Frankenstein’s child was abandoned by Victor’s own narcissistic compulsion toward resistance of family. Demonstrated in his near refusal to marry his cousin Elizabeth. He

Through the continual exaggerations of the love provided by the family in the book, Victor Frankenstein, the main actor shows the inadequacy of his family life that overlies his protestations for attachment. The inevitable ambivalence related to his childhood develops suspicion that becomes critical antiquity for the nature of parenting the children received during this time. Textual analysis shows that it undercuts Frankenstein on the nature of his

   In the novel Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, the characters have been portrayed effectively. Much of the interactions between characters, and characteristics of the characters have been based on events which have occurred in Shelley's own life, or they represent what she believes is important. For example, Victor is portrayed as having a strong passion for science, and a poor understanding of relationships. Elizabeth is shown as a stereotypical woman of the time, who is also very powerless. The monster is depicted as being both beautiful and ugly, and someone who the reader feels sympathetic towards. Through the portrayal of her characters, Shelley has created a very effective

Elizabeth frequently makes sacrifices for the Frankenstein family from early childhood all the way until her death. She assumes the role of womanhood at a young age after Caroline 's death. Rather than living out her days of childhood, she comes almost a mother figure to Victor and his younger brothers. While Victor is allowed to seize opportunities to travel and further his education, Elizabeth instead stays in Geneva (Shelley, 23).

As well as a horrific way of creating life, Mary Shelley brought a new subject to the table in Frankenstein-- Feminism. Throughout the novel, the author characterizes each female as passive, disposable, and serving as a utility for the male characters. The situations they find themselves in are generally minor and are used to teach the male characters a lesson, or spark an emotion in them. During the period that Shelley wrote Frankenstein, it was very common to see women discarded, objectified, and abused. It is clear that feminism and misogyny are reflected in her novel, given the use of her female characters.

Whereas Godwin and Wollstonecraft’s work only possess traces of the eternal feminine, Shelley shares Goethe’s fascination with the Gothic and the sublime. In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s cousin and fiancée Elizabeth combines Charlotte and Gretchen into one character. Like Charlotte, the deaths of her maternal influences force Elizabeth to become a surrogate mother to her young cousin William. Victor also idealizes Elizabeth in the way Werther worships Charlotte, describing how, “Since the death of her aunt . . . she felt that the most imperious duty of rendering her uncle and cousins happy, had devolved upon her” (2). Here, Elizabeth adheres to Goethe’s vision of the virtuous mother who wholly devotes herself to her children and family. Although Elizabeth possesses Charlotte’s moral purity, her tragic death aligns with Gretchen’s fate. Like Gretchen, Elizabeth fails as a mother when Victor’s monster murders her surrogate son, William. While the monster kills Elizabeth to spite Victor, her death establishes a correlation between her life and status as a mother; if Elizabeth cannot protect or help her children, she possesses no value as an individual. She simply becomes a disposable prop that resolves

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein the critical essay “Lesbian Panic and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (“Lesbian Panic”) by Frann Michel approaches Frankenstein from a gender perspective and applies Adrienne Rich’s lesbian continuum, the “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” where female relationships, mother-daughter/sisters/female friendships which all fall under the umbrella of lesbian relations, to the relationships that are present in Frankenstein. Frann Michel clarifies through her essay that any work of literature that takes a critical point of view of heterosexual relationships is, in fact, a lesbian text. Michel states that in Frankenstein the motion of lesbian panic is prevalent because lesbian desire is avoided at all costs – during the 1800’s society was rampant with panic, or phobia, amongst those who were afraid of potential sexual desires with one another. Lesbians were considered “Sapphic monstrosities” (Michel 351). In placing female characteristics on all characters in the novel Michel argues, in “Reading Mothers and Lovers”, that Victor Frankenstein’s “maternal anxiety” and his creature’s unfulfilled desire for a female is a doubling of them reflecting with their female counterparts under the lesbian continuum (Michel 355). In “Difference and Desire” Michel claims that Justine and Elizabeth’s tender moments at the end of Justine’s life comes to an end as a result of her unjust confinement and murder. The creature created by Victor is henceforth the

Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein portrays female and male characters in their stereotypical roles. The females are characterized as passive, weak, and play submissive roles in the novel. They are undermined compared to the male characters. The men of Frankenstein are represented as harsh, strong and less emotional. Characters such as Justine, Agatha, and Elizabeth serve as a medium that contribute to the emotional crisis Victor goes through. These women are intelligent, but are victimized to society shown as powerless and unable to protect themselves.

     There are many different themes expressed in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. They vary with each reader but basically never change. These themes deal with the education that each character posses, the relationships formed or not formed in the novel, and the responsibility for ones own actions. This novel even with the age still has ideas that can be reasoned with even today.