The history of literature is full of good and evil struggling against each other, often in the forms of heroes and villains. It seems as if we, the readers, need a clear distinction between these two in order to grasp which one of them we ought to support, and which one to fear. In reality, though, people are neither completely good nor evil. Most people are complex and can have very different traits, traits that even contradict each other. As previously mentioned, when first looking at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein it seems as if Victor is a kind and good-natured man, whilst the creature is cold-hearted and brutal. But when looking more closely at the text, the labels which we willingly attribute to the characters become more indistinct. Moreover, a great many similarities between the two can even be found, and the traits that the first character lacks, the other …show more content…
A likely explanation for this is that they are mirrors of each other, with the creature being a representation of Victor’s dark and savage side. Through the creature, all of Victor’s suppressed emotions can manifest themselves. Together they complete each other. No man is entirely good or evil: “nature can be the source of death as well as life. Good people do evil” (Lipking 330). Both sides need to be expressed. Moreover, this means that there is no supernatural element in the creature, as only a human being or humanoid can be a true monster. Although Victor tries to be, and believes that he is entirely good, his situation is untenable. A breakdown in the form of the creature is the result of his unwillingness to embrace his darker side. As an extenseion of Victor, the creature shares some similarities with him, but has the capability of following his raw isntincts and emotions. “like forces in the natural world, Frankenstein’s nregulated desires gathers strength until it erupts in the monster’s creation” (Poovery
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
The creature's physical grotesqueness makes the creature unable to attain affection from the human societies. The creature is initially rejected by his creator, who is the closest resemblance to a mother or father figure. Despite this relationship, Victor finds the creature to be a "miserable monster" (39). Consequently, as soon as life is present within the creature, Victor abandons his child. Victor claims that he "escaped, and rushed down the stairs" (40) away from the
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
In the novel by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, the creature and its creator, Victor Frankenstein, share a lot of similarities throughout the story. The relationship shared between the two resembles that of a father and his son. Since Victor created it , the creature inherits certain traits of Victor’s without realizing it. Victor and the creature both have an overpowering thirst for knowledge, a love for the beauty of nature and a tendency to use it as a scapegoat, a depressing feeling of isolation from people, a desire for revenge, and the ability to play God. The relationship between Victor and the creature does not develop like a normal father-son relationship, nor does it develop as a good versus evil relationship. Both characters show hero and villain qualities throughout the novel as their relationship develops.
Frankenstein is a tale of an individual with many mixed identities. Often hearing the name of Frankenstein comes along with a monstrous spirit. Although in Mary Shelley’s novel, The monster is the horrible creation from the scientist, he just wanted a friend that was the same level of intelligence with him and one that he could be able to speak with and be friends with. Victor robbed body parts from graves and he was ready to for this construction. One stormy October night, he brought it to life. When Victor saw this creature reaching out to him, attempting for a smile, Victor began scared and ran from the
As his creator, Victor Frankenstein holds a significant amount of responsibility for the condition of the relationship between himself and the Creature. The Creature realizes that the people of the world owe him nothing, but Frankenstein, however, owes him a chance for a better life (87). When Victor first completes the being, it is evident that he despises his previously treasured creation. He is “unable to endure the aspect of the being [he] had created,” and unable to take responsibility for his actions, leading him to settle on hating the product of these actions instead (43). Although in his infancy, the Creature better comprehends the responsibilities that Victor should hold than Victor does himself, which is portrayed when the Creature says, “ ‘Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us’ ” (86). The Creature recognizes that a creator is not meant to hate their creation, but rather to love them (86). The Creature’s experiences in his short life have greatly increased his ability to understand complex ideas, however, he fails to make reason as to why Frankenstein would create “ ‘ ‘a monster that even [he] turned from [the Creature] in disgust’ ’ ” (118). The emphasis on Victor hating the Creature demonstrates the hurt he has caused
Well in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein I will tell you how victor and the monster are very similar in a lot of ways first off Victor created the monster not intended to be like Himself but out of nowhere he does not look like him physically but mentally and personality wise they are the same. So in a crazy way, These two characters have been isolated, have been neglected by society and abandoned.
In Frankenstein, the reader is presented with two main characters of which are both monsters. Nevertheless one must be crowned as the true monster. The Creature is a monster who posses the free will and consciousness of a human. Victor is a human being trying to play God. They both have felt pain and anger; they were driven to do unspeakable things. However one is worse than the other.
In the book, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the author illustrates similarities between both Victor and the Monster he creates. She draws parallels between the two regarding their feelings on family, nature, on exacting revenge, and how they both become isolated from society. Both are able to demonstrate extreme intelligence. As the novel progresses, Victor and the Monster become more similar to each other. Their relationship turns to one in which each is consumed with getting revenge on the other at all costs.
It was made out of many dead bodies which made it look ugly. When Victor saw the creature alive in front of him, he was scared by the thought of what he ended up with. Frankenstein’s monster is like a new-born baby. It did not know how to speak or cope up with the world. When Victor turned his back on the monster, it felt betrayed. It did not get the love and support it should’ve been given. Also, when the world was reluctant to accept the creature even after it helped them, it started harming the people who hurt him. It felt lonely as it was not taken care of by the only father figure he had, Victor himself. The monster told Victor, “You had made me, but why had you not looked after me, and saved me from this pain and unhappiness?” (Page 30) This showed how much deprived of happiness the monster was, which made him take revenge from Frankenstein.
Throughout the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley, the creature is subjected to countless acts of violence and rejection. For a monster to develop, one must have been formerly exploited either by an individual or their society. The creature is not only a physical product of science, but his atrocious behavior is also an explicit result of Victor’s actions toward him. The creature was not born a monster, but slowly morphed into one as he experiences violence and rejection from his society.
Some people see Frankenstein and his creature as complete opposites, but they are not as different as they may seem. Victor and his creature have no mother figure in the novel. Victor’s mother was there for Victor in the beginning but “resigned cheerfully to death… she died calmly” (Shelley 53), whereas the creature was born without one. Therefore, throughout the novel, both Victor and the creature have to depend on their fathers for guidance. Frankenstein and the creature are both intelligent. Frankenstein gains his intelligence through his schooling and experience, while the creature gains intelligence through observations, experience, and “Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch’s Lives, and the Sorrows of Werter” (Shelley 155). These characters want to be accepted in the world. Frankenstein wants to be accepted in the
Recognising the true feeling of his creator towards him the monster beings to inflict pain on to Victor by hurting his loved ones. Revengeful, Victor wants to“trample [his creation, the creature,] to dust” (Shelley 97) for the murders the wretched monster has done and fully intends to commit, similar to how a God in many religions may deliver divine retribution onto its creation. Victor’s supposition of authority over whether his creation will live or die is another attempt to play God. Victor plans to kill his own creation to protect the lives of his family and friends, however, as Victor pursuits after his creation, other humans are endangered and Frankenstein’s attempt to prevent the monster from harming any more of Victor’s loved ones is
In Frankenstein – A Critical Study from a Freudian Perspective, it compares the monster and Victor and concludes that the monster and Victor is the “mirror-inversion”, it states that they “both are intelligent and well educated, and both start out with the impulse to be good” (Johnson 3), for example: Victor is a “dutiful son and the monster in his efforts to help the de Lacey family”, and “Yet both end up as murderers, haunted and hunted by each other” (Johnson 3). I agree with this, Victor and the monster are like contradictory parts of a same person; the monster is active and energetic but also violent and cruel, it is like the evil side of Victor. And this is the reason that Victor constantly tries to get rid of the monster but fail to do so: the monster represents Victor’s dark side, and Victor can’t escape from his own negative thoughts. Moreover, every time when Victor makes the decision which relates to the monster, the monster is like a mirror that reflects Victor’s irresponsible, timid and selfish characters, and it’s the growing of these negative characters which lead Victor to frequently make the false decision. Overall, the monster makes Victor comes to a deep understanding of his characters: if Victor does not create the monster, he would never know how destructive his mind is; also,