Betrayal is a major topic that many authors often integrate into their literature. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein betrayal plays a large role in the influence on characters’ actions and the consequences they face. Shelley explores the negative results that one can yield if they betray their values and those they love. In doing so, Shelley conveys that in betraying one’s moral obligations and their values, they often harm themselves and those they love. One of the main protagonists, Victor Frankenstein reflects this idea with him betraying his creation and abandoning his responsibility to take care of his creation. As a result, his own betrayal towards the monster creates a series of irresponsible actions that instigate his betrayal to nature, and his family and friends. To begin, Victor betrays nature with the physical creation of the monster. Upon giving the creature life, Victor becomes horrified of what he had created and essentially left the creature in fear. It is nature’s responsibility to create life, not mankind. Since Victor gives the monster life, he has created something unnatural and he himself even admits his mistake when he states, “I have created a monster.” To make matters worse, Victor had left his creation on its own when the monster had no prior experience in the world and was learning everything from this point on. The monster, at this point, reflected the innocent nature of a child and needed to be taught properly about life. Victor’s
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein tells the tale of a man whose entire life turns to misery after creating what he calls a monster, a demon and a fiend. However, the real monster in this story is pride and the feeling of superiority. This is evident in the novel with Robert Walton’s view of himself and his expedition, Victor Frankenstein’s attitude towards himself in comparison with the creature, and mankind’s perception of the creature and their ignorance towards him.
In the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the character Victor Frankenstein illustrates betrayal in the way he abandons his creation, with no hesitation he leaves him behind. With the feeling of abandonment ,the creature feels anger towards Victor which leads the “monster” to become a villain. Love and family are all the monster wants, but it is something that Victor could not give due to his own internal battles. As result, the monster begins to take Victor’s loved ones such as: little William and his wife Elizabeth. The monster kills
Victor obsession with his creation represents the dark side of ambition. By creating the monster, “darkness” follow him wherever he goes through the representation of deaths and daunting weather like lightning. After his release from prison, he saw around him “nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me” (Shelley 160). By trying to turn himself into a god through the creation of the monster, that is, the unnatural, Victor is deprived of joy and is tormented by fevers, anxiety, and stress because he had thrown nature into the state of imbalance. Rather than feeling a sense of accomplishment through his scientific achievement, he lives in fear and guilt knowing that he is the cause for the destruction of his
Victor knew that what he was doing was hurting his body physically and mentally, “My labors would soon end, and I believe that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease” (Shelley 42) Victor felt this way when he was in the midst of the creation of his monster. Victor knows that his decisions were hindering his body and his ruining his limited time that Victor has on this Earth. The hindering of someone’s body and wasting of time is going to be a direct result of Victor’s demise. The actual creation of the monster also took a toll on Victor; Victor describes the monster by saying “No moral could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch” (Shelley 44) Another example of Victor’s description of the creation of the monster the night before “I trembled exclusively; I could not endure to think of, and far less to allude to, the occurrences of the preceding night” (Shelley 46) Even the next day, after the monster was created, Victor still was hurt by the creation of the monster which then led to Victor being very sick, only to be nursed back to health by Clerval. All of this could have been avoided by Victor if he would have not of created the monster. But because Victor decided to create the monster, the consequences of these actions were the ultimate demise of Victor with the person responsible for the demise being victor
In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, the unnamed creature brings terror to civilians and commits horrific acts against his creator, Victor Frankenstein. However, his redeemable acts of kindness makes his character morally ambiguous. He struggles between doing well and causing trouble because of isolation, the excerpts of society, and his pursuit for love.
Mary Shelley’s story of internal turmoil, the cruelty of altering the laws of nature, and the consequences of redefining the laws of nature is a harrowing one, known widely by many audiences, yet it is never the nature of the characters that is discussed, only the outcome. Shelley’s deliberate use of different character foils portrays the deeper connections and themes in her 1818 novel, Frankenstein. The creation and presence of Frankenstein’s monster directly foils the character of Victor Frankenstein himself, illustrating overarching themes of self inflicted isolation and internal conflict, exposing the dangers and consequences of complete and total narcissism, and revealing a truth many still refuse to accept: we, as humans, are capable
Victor thought “for this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart”(page). This quote demonstrates that once Victor had concluded his work of creating the monster, he realized that it may have been a huge mistake. He was not satisfied with his creation instead he was filled with terror. In result of his realization, he left the monster to fend for himself and suffer. Victor shows an evil side of himself by abandoning the monster and leaving him to be universally shunned by society. By Victor doing this one evil act, it causes the monster himself to go off and initiate evil acts of his own.
In the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, we discover that the search for now knowledge has a good and a bad side. Suffering is something we all go through at some point. We try to avoid it but our search for knowledge will always lead to suffering. In Frankenstein Victor had set out on a search for knowledge, he was relentless. His search consumed all his time, destroyed relationships, and lead to the death of not only himself but his friends and family. All of those negative effects originated from the monster Victor had created on his search for knowledge. Although Victor may have achieved his end goal, at what cost did this come to? Victor’s search
"Do you think, Victor," said he, "that I do not suffer also? No one could love a child more than I loved your brother" (tears came into his eyes as he spoke); "but is it not a duty to the survivors, that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed to yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society." (78)
Questioning is a natural human instinct. We do this when we are unsure of a situation or thing. Another human instinct is lying. We often lie to protect ourselves or others. Guilt is a human emotion that you experience when you know you have done something wrong.
In Mary Shelley's popular novel, Frankenstein, there are many scenes where betrayal is a main problem between the character. Both friends and family betray the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and each other along the way. Along with the betrayal between characters, there is also evidence of betrayal within the character's own values and self. The nature of the betrayal in Frankenstein is a recurring theme and is present from the first ideas of creating the monster to the destruction of the monster. Betrayal contributes to the meaning of Frankenstein because it leads to extreme illness, and even death in many cases. The novel, which is mainly focused on the creation of Victor Frankenstein's monster, is infused
The monster knows his master and knows that Victor wishes he hadn’t created him and this makes the monster feel terrible about himself. He also knows that Victor feels like he played a hand in every person that his creation murders and the Monster learns to use this to his advantage. He does what he know will hurt his master the most, be kills Victor's friends one by one. This twists Victor and sours his very being. It turns him into a completely different person and killing his creation becomes his goal in life. He went from an energetic and curious young scientists to a old, licentious man bent on killing. The monster felt that he was getting back at his master but probably didn’t fully understand what he was doing by killing. He never had anyone teach him how twisted and evil taking a life is and as a result it was relatively easy for him to nullify a human being. Society had shunning him because of his horrific appearance from the first time they saw him and never looked back. He stands at an intimidating eight feet and is crafted of mangled human corpses, not exactly a common looking being. While he might at looked strange or scary, he had the mind of a very young child what needed guidance. Because of Victor’s guilt, he never gave the monster the teaching that it really needed. This feeds into the cycle and really makes the problem that ends up killing several people and twisting Victor into someone no reasonable person would strive to
The monster believed that Victor would accept him, but after he realized that not only did Victor not want to assume his position in the monster’s life, but society also rejected him, it became a transitory thought, and instead became replaced with his bloodthirst towards Victor and his loved ones, which he knew would hurt way worse than just killing him; making him lonely like himself. Both Victor and the monster partook in horrid acts, in which held horrendous actions; the main one being Victor creating the monster in the first place which in result caused the both of them heartbreak, loneliness, and pain. If Victor wouldn’t have created the monster, then his life would not be filled with so much grief and emptiness; Victor is the true monster, although they are both the primal protagonists as much as they are the antagonists because of the display of the emotions they both portray as lamenting humans/monsters, and the power they give to nature in order to destroy one another. Victor used nature to his advantage, although it was wrong; Victor used nature to create and destroy the monster; he used the
Griffith further supports the idea of Victor being the problem and his ignorance becoming increasingly detrimental to his family’s health. Victor’s actions inevitabely brings death and pain to his family although the monster is responsible. Victor is the real monster for creating the monster and negleting his very own creation. Also, after creating the being, he neglects its needs and wants and runs away from his responsibility as the creator. This quote from Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, shows that Victor, being too binded in his ambitions, did not think through the process of creating a human and rushed it creating a bitter and crushed soul:
Victor does not take responsibility for his creation. Victor disrupted the natural order of things by creating the monster. He also knew that leaving the monster was wrong but he did anyway because he did not want to deal with the repercussions of being the person who created the monster. Victor neglects his own moral responsibility in this book. He leaves the monster with no help, no care, and no love (“An Overview of Frankenstein”). Victor is an irresponsible character and that ultimately leads to the major downfall of the book. If Victor would have been there for the monster and taught him things then maybe the monster would not be so angry with the world and would have refrained from killing innocent people. The monster was not trying to hurt these people all he was concerned about what was getting back at Victor for leaving him behind. Victor was obviously a smart man he just made a careless and selfish decision by leaving the monster. He was looking out for himself and watching his own back to protect his reputation and not have to deal with criticism from other people.