Comparing Frankenstein 'And Candide' By Voltaire

In the novel "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, the relationship of external appearance and internal feelings are directly related. The creature is created and he is innocent, though he is severely deformed. His nature is to be good and kind, but society only views his external appearance which is deformed. Human nature is to judge by external appearance. He is automatically detested and labeled as a monster because of his external appearance. He finally realized that no matter how well he speaks and how kind he is, people will never be able to see past his external deformities. Children are fearful of him, Adults think he is dangerous, and his own creator abandons him in disgust. The creature is

While Creature is full of humanity and has a thirst for knowledge, his longing for acceptance in society is met with constant rejection. Through this rejection, it sparks anger into the Creature for his irresponsible creator, Victor Frankenstein. Creature’s anger leads to greater tragedies for Victor. The greater of the tragedies are the murdering of innocent people including Victor’s family that is seen to be the fault of Creature since he is the one who murdered them. If Victor did not abandon the Creature and had taught him murder was not morally correct, Creature would not have committed the heinous acts.When Creature was first theoretically born, he was introduced into the world in a very harsh way. Metaphorically, Creature starts out into the world as a newborn, needing a parent 's guidance and teachings. Victor abandons him immediately with no sense of direction. Creature, after his “birth”, approaches Victor with a hand of longing for compassion. “He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they maybe called, were fixed on me...He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out” (Shelley 35). Victor instead of showing acceptance immediately runs away at the sight of him.

Easily one of the most notable themes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the role of nature versus nurture in developing children, recurs throughout the novel with the two main characters, Frankenstein and his creature, believing in opposite sides of this theme. Favoring nature, Frankenstein maintains that the creature was always evil from the moment of creation, regardless of the creature’s experiences. However, the creature, in his narrative to Frankenstein, argues that “[he] was benevolent and good; misery made [him] a fiend” (106). In adherence with John Locke’s concept of tabula rasa, the creature was born with a blank slate, and only through his experiences does he gain knowledge and personality. Struggling to persevere in the human world, Frankenstein’s creature merely wants humans to welcome him as one of them. The change of the creature from looking “upon crime as a distant evil” because “benevolence and generosity were ever present” in him to seeking revenge on Frankenstein results from a culmination of horrible experiences (103). While it may be hard to see the creature as a trustworthy narrator because of how he has acted and his ulterior motives, he does present physical evidence to support his tale. Facing rejection in different forms, he becomes truly evil, giving up hope of companionship as a result of his trials and lessons. From the moment of his creation, the creature encounters abandonment, violence, isolation, and rejection everywhere he turns.

When reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein it is easy to see the practical argument: Victor has created a monster. In the novel Victor is exposed to us— his family values, his journey to school, his drive for scientific achievements, etc. It is easy to see Victor as a victim of a monstrous creature. The monster murders everyone that Victor loves. Though, the second half of the novel exposes the “monster” to us— he is an angry, child-murder that stalks and horrifies a family (and within that family a blind man), murders the friends and family of his creator. Therefore, in the minds of most it’s easily assessed that the creature is the monster. But it seems, if you pick apart our protagonist, that he is indeed

In Shelley’s Frankenstein, the monster is portrayed as a grotesque abomination. However, as Hopkins states in Contending Forces, the cultural and geographical situations, or lack thereof, in which one matures in play a crucial role in the proper development of one’s mind and brain. The monster is simply a product of circumstance. The lack of social interactions alongside geographical isolation propelled the daemon to be alienated from society, ultimately resulting in a lack of morals and an underdeveloped psyche. By being a culmination of his surroundings and experiences it is revealed that the true monstrous entities are the factors that leave the daemon predisposed to fail in a modern society. Arguably, Victor created a being, while the circumstances that said being was placed in “created” a monster. Shelley purposefully terrorizes the monster with such intensity to provoke and justify the overarching theme in this novel which states that people should not be judged on their physical appearance.

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein we are introduced early in the story to one of the main characters Victor Frankenstein and subsequently to his creation referred to as the monster. The monster comes to life after being constructed by Victor using body parts from corpses. As gruesome as this sounds initially we are soon caught up in the tale of the living monster. Victor the creator becomes immediately remorseful of his decision to bring the monstrous creation to life and abandons the borne creature. Victor describes his emotions and physical description of his creation as follows:

In addition to being rejected by his creator, Frankenstein’s monster is also treated very violently by humans, leaving him alone and feeling like he did something wrong, even though their reactions are based solely on his appearance. The monster does not want to be thought of as a monster at first, but as he comes to realize from human interactions, no matter what his actions are, people will always judge him by what he cannot control. The monster explains the first interaction he had ever had with

The first incident when the reader witnesses a passage of judgment that is based on one’s appearance is when the Frankenstein family adopts Elizabeth Lavenza. Elizabeth is found living in the streets with a poor Italian family and Caroline Frankenstein adopts Elizabeth because she is a very pretty girl. Elizabeth’s beauty allowed people to judge her as pure and worthy so, despite all the other children in the streets, Elizabeth is given a great education, a wealthy family, and a beautiful home. On the contrary, when Victor creates his creature, Victor is so horrified by his ugliness that he flees his apartment. When Victor later returns and finds that the creature is gone, Victor has the audacity to celebrate and call the creature his “enemy”. It is true that in nature, the creature would be a great predator. The creature is great in stature, incredibly fast, incredibly strong, and exceedingly intelligent. Weaker animals would be smart to run from this animal. However, Frankenstein’s creature is not an animal. The creature was comprised of the most perfect human limbs, organs, and bones that Victor

In doing so, Frankenstein condemns the creature to loneliness and persecution. The creature's hatred and violent acts are not an inherent part of his character, as he explains, "I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous" (81). If Frankenstein had raised and cared for him, the creature would have experienced compassion, and had someone to support him and be his advocate. Instead, the creature is left to learn about the world on his own, and develop a set of morals based on the way society treats him. Because he grows up outside of, and shunned by, society, he feels very little moral obligation towards other human beings. "...and tell me why should I pity man more than he pities me?" the creature asks Frankenstein. "Shall I respect man when he contemns [sic] me?" (122) The creature is not a monster in his own eyes; he is behaving rationally given the treatment he has received. If he were taught a better way to act, he would almost certainly behave in that way. The monster is not born a monster, his ugliness notwithstanding; he becomes one because society behaves monstrously towards him.

(Shelley). The fact that Frankenstein fled from his creation very shortly after it came to life, proves how he refused to accept his obligations and responsibilities after his creature was created. ?The [creature] is Frankenstein?s abandoned child? (Mellor Abandonment 357). It is unfair to bring something into the world, and then not teach it how to survive. Victor was intimidated by his hideous characteristics and felt threatened by the creature. He did not know his creation at all, so he had no right to judge him. This is an example of how various people and society place too much judgment on physical appearance. The creature had just come into the world for the first time, and the first thing he saw was his creator screaming for his life as a result of his appearance. This traumatized the creation, and caused him to seek revenge on Frankenstein. This novel shows how when people are prejudice against physical deformity or ugliness, it automatically characterizes that person as bad or monstrous (Halberstam 59). Victor was the one who gave him these characteristics; so in fact, he is to blame for the creature?s appearance being so monstrous.

Victor Frankenstein's upbringing in a perfect society ultimately led to the destruction of his life which coincided with the lives of those emotionally close to

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is very much a commentary on the Enlightenment and its failure to tame the human condition through reason. The human condition can be defined as the unique features which mold a human being. The creature is undoubtedly a victim of this predicament. He grapples with the meaning of life, the search for gratification, the sense of curiosity, the inevitability of isolation, and the awareness of the inescapability of death. These qualities and his ceaseless stalking of his master conjure up the metaphor that he is the shadow of the Enlightenment. Indeed, the Enlightenment is represented through Frankenstein whereas the creature is the embodiment of everything it shuns. These include nature, emotion, and savagery. The two characters are understood as counterparts and yet strikingly similar at the same time. The creature is considered a monster because of his grotesque appearance. Frankenstein on the other hand is a monster of another kind: his ambition, secrecy, and selfishness alienate him from human society. He is eventually consumed by an obsessive hatred of his creation. Both characters also commit primordial crimes. Although rationality pervades through Frankenstein's endeavours, it can be argued that he becomes less human the more he tries to be God. The secret of life lies beyond an accepted boundary from which none can return. By creating life Frankenstein ironically sets the stage for his own destruction as well as that of his family. The

Throughout the three fiction novels the flaws of each of the main characters are blatant and causes them to hurt themselves and the people around them. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein is reclusive and mostly concerned with superficial qualities, which leads him to abandon the monster he created. Then, in Voltaire's Candide, the novel explored how a naive and impressionable young man endangers himself and puts the people around him in crazy, satirical situations. Lastly, in Albert Camus’s The Stranger, the detachment of Meursault leads him to have an existential crisis and decide whether these is an inherent meaning to life. These novels have a strong common thread: each main character is ridiculously flawed and misguided in each novel.

Within the eighteenth and nineteenth century there are two great writers who were alive. François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, and Victor Hugo. These two men wrote many story’s in their life but I will focus on Candid, written by Voltaire, and les miserable which was written by Hugo. Even though these great authors come from the same nation of France the themes, symbols, and social culture differ but are also a lot alike.

Although Frankenstein was the embodiment of many different parts put together. I call Sir Conan Doyle the Frankenstein writer of writing. He takes different people’s life’s mixes them together and develops different charters within his writing.