Essay On Morality In Mary Shelley's Creature '

Hence, this reflects a similar dilemma as the one God and Satan have in Paradise Lost, Satan can be comparable to Victor’s creature since he can also speak rationally and persuasively and Victor can be comparable to god as he is the creator of his creature. The creature and Victor to have one common trait of both being ambitious, but the creature is vengeful. The creature wants revenge on Victor because he asked him to make him a partner so he is not alone anymore, but Victor denied him of that so in return the creature planned to make Victor feel as lonely as he felt. Though this was a gradual plan which he proposed as concepts of family, love, and care the creature understood overtime. When the creature comes to life Victor leaves it alone as he is disgusted by it, “breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” (Shelley 42). The creature at the time had little idea of what was happening around him and was just searching for basic necessities of shelter, food and clothing, but his interactions with others he was able to understand how he was perceived. The creature main education came from observing the De Lacey family and the village that they lived in especially from the books that he finds in the hut. The books are significant as they help him recognize the world around him and his feelings. In Plutarch’s Lives he learns about “higher thought” and of kingdoms, seas and large countries which are all very confusing to him as he has only known the village that he

In chapter 4, Victor explains the importance of success in reanimating life. For Victor, the reanimation insures that he will be known as a creator in comparison to god. (Shelley 32). In chapter fifteen, the creature states that his life is like Adam because there is “no link to any other being in existence” (Shelley 92). Apart from that, Shelley connects the creature to Satan in regards to the fact that “for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protector, the bitter gall of envy rose within me” (Shelley 93). This shows the conflict within the creature between good and evil.

Due to Victor’s unwillingness to accept him, the creature was unable to conform to societal norms. From the creature’s very first moments, he is feared by others - the instant his eyes open, his creator cries out in terror and runs to his quarters. If only Victor had stayed and attempted to nurture his creation, instead of having “turned from [him] in disgust” (93), the creature may have enjoyed a gentle, upbringing in which he

In declaring the “everlasting war against the species” Shelley confirms that the Creature does not correlate with humans because of the feared rejection of the differences him and other species. Shelley’s interpretation of human nature is one of complexity of social and personal interaction, and the look of impenetrable crime and awareness of a monstrosity viewed by its transgressors.

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.

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

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein deeply develops the trope of nature vs. nurture. The romantic era is characterized by a desire to revert to natural animalistic living in the world. Shelley’s main characters embody nature and nurture respectively. Victor, raised in a loving home, kills with no concern and disregards his caring family. The Monster, Victor’s creation, on the other hand, is forced to live in nature like an animal with no companion. Victor is Shelley’s direct comment on the Victorian lifestyle characterized by material possession and religious moral structure. Victor embodies one who is grounded in societally constructed niceties and formalities but is corrupted by the lifestyle. The monster is shown to be the morally correct character

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.

    Imagine an eight-foot-tall, misshapen human child. You might complain that this is contradictory - but do it anyway. Imagine some sort of humanoid being with the mind of a human child in an eight-foot body, green with a nail in its head if you want. This is what Frankenstein's creature is. Frankenstein's creature is mentally a child, and we see its evolution through traditional child development in the course of its narrative. But the creature is the only member of its species, and therefore its narrative can be taken to represent the history of an entire species - the creature's first experiences can be viewed as an amalgam of creation myths.

The allusion to Dante implies that, based on appearance alone, the monster is more evil than Hell itself. Victor took no time in getting to understand the monster or develop the familial bond between them, which leaves Victor with a narrow, biased opinion on the monster. Shelley uses Victor’s hasty judgment of the monster in order to demonstrate the irrationality of Victor’s actions regarding the creature. This also discounts Victor’s opinions of the monster, forcing Shelley’s audience to judge the monster based on their own inferences, rather than Victor’s. Through Victor’s actions and his faulty reasoning behind them, Shelley is able to shift the responsibility for the monster’s character from it being instilled in him from birth, to Victor’s failings as a parent and creator.

When the monster is first created victor says "he held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaw opened and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks." So this shows that at the beginning the creature was a happy to be alive, good person I would say. But he was treated poorly. He came to life and

Like most horror stories, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has a wretched monster who terrorizes and kills his victims with ease. However, the story is not as simple as it seems. One increasingly popular view of the true nature of the creature is one of understanding. This sympathetic view is often strengthened by looking at the upbringing of the creature in the harsh world in which he matures much as a child would. With no friends or even a true father, the creature can be said to be a product of society and its negative views and constant rejections of him. Although this popular view serves to lessen the severity of his crimes in most people’s eyes, the fact remains that the creature is in fact a cold-hearted wretch whose vindictive nature

Thomas O’Boyle Notecard # 1 Topic The Creature on Relationships Direct Quotation “ And it is just such an internalized object—or, more precisely, a set of internalized relationships—that the monster tries to locate when his own props are lost. When he is deserted by the De Laceys, he is first despondent ("in a state of utter and stupid despair"

The creature is renounced by Victor throughout the book, which removes any positive role model that the creature might have had. The two encounters that Victor has with the creature when it is first created are evidence of his rejection. The first is when Victor finishes creating the creature. During the process of creation, Victor dedicates himself so greatly that he "pursued [his] undertaking with unremitting ardour" (32). He puts aside everything else in his life, and concentrates completely on his purpose, which is to bring a being to life that would serve him. In order to do so, he spent an entire summer "engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit" (32). Because of the hard work that Victor puts into his work of creation, he never really examines the fruits of his labour. He is too caught up in his work, and has "lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit" (32) of finishing his work on making the creature. So in the process of his creation, Victor is never really aware of what he is creating because he is too focused on the actual act of creation. However, when Victor finally finishes the work of making the creature, and takes time to look at what he has done, he is horrified by his accomplishment. As the creation opens an eye, and

This piece of text says that the kids thought the beast was something they could hunt and kill. But little do they know it lives within them all. This beast is the reason why they cannot do the things they wish to do, or why they cannot act the way they wish to act. The boys didn’t know that this so called beast that lives inside them is what makes their actions and their thought process. As the beast grows in them all their civilization diminishes. Their savagery grows and gets worse day by day. This monster is eating them on the inside. Making them turn against each, making them act like fools, making them simply not them; these boys do no act like themselves what so ever when they realize that this monster living in them all is a terrifying