Frankenstein Monster Symbolism

“God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it... God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” (Genesis 1:27, 29) Unlike God and his love for his creation, Victor despised and was disgusted with the creature he had created. He showed no love or appreciation for his creation, leading the creature to believe that all society was identical to his creator, or that there might be a diamond in the rough, as John Fletchers, the playwright, would put it. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the main character Victor sees himself as a god in the idea that he is creating life. Victor

The idea of what a monster is and how it pertains to modern day society has fascinated readers and writers for decades. Before taking this class, I was aware of what a monster is and the function it served in today’s society. Furthermore, after taking this class, I am now aware of what a monster truly is, and what really separates a monster from a regular person. The piece of text that I mainly chose to focus on and elaborate closely to demonstrate the aspects of a monster is appropriately named, Monster, by Walter Dean Myers. The reason I chose this piece of literature is because, Monster thoroughly elaborates what a monster is in todays society and how it functions in the modern day world. In this essay I will elaborate on

Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein in 1816 when she was just 20 years old. Even at a young age, she was able to craft what is considered the first science fiction novel. At this time of her writing, a scientific revolution was occurring and with it came advances in topics like radiation and atomic theory. With this rapid change in science and human understanding, Shelly chose to write a story as plea against unorthodox scientific experiments. She portrays this idea with the use of the characters Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created. Through her use of these characters, as well as her use of allusions from religious texts and other literary works, she is able further her argument against untraditional science.

Playing God is a role that no man should ever take upon themselves. Many conflicts may arise and we may never know where to draw the line between the human world and scientific discoveries. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the main character decides to act as God and creates a being that serves as tragic figure and functions as an instrument of unintentional suffering to others. The novel is about a man's quest for acceptance and shows the potential destruction people may cause while trying to find their place in the world.

There is an animation on Youtube, “le ravissement de Frank N. Stein,” (Schwizgebel) in which you are in first person perspective, and wake to an abstract landscape before your eyes. You see flashes of death, then a laboratory. You walk through the door, to see another door, then another, and another, endlessly walking though barren rooms, until you descend the stairs to more rooms. You walk until the rooms begin to host abstract forms that slowly morph into human-like ones, and in the end, the forms become copies of Frankenstein’s Monster and the Bride. And then you continue walking through these rooms flooded with them.

Though the conclusions arrived at here are of the same theoretical place as the philosophical minds had deliberated before, the explanations had by Burke and Shaw circumvented parallel processes of thought, to more rely upon their similar conclusions, both rooted in historical precedent. With Frankenstein, however, Shelley stays committed to its endgame in practicing metaphorical weight and symbolic meaning, not only for setting the classical arguments incorporated here, in definite terms. This isn’t even in creating some microcosm of a singularized case in which man had sought to defy the natural barriers, and replicate the things he saw, and experienced. Instead, interactions between characters and unfolding conflicts set upon them, are to represent both these spheres converging. They are depicted less as staunch absolutes, but more so met with being altered, and changing the perceptions drawn up all along. Conferred later in an accounted byproduct of a more recent mindset, this nonetheless stands for lessons at the underpinnings of how we have grown as a society in general, which Shelley would seem to remind us of. As opposed to some alleged “Modern Prometheus,” Victor’s pursuit comes up barely mythicized, and as Bate says, “is a healthy disorientation… to realize that the Western man may not after all be the master of all things” (Bate 480). Likewise, the creature takes on a role within the self-fulfilling prophecy, subject to the maltreatment of human benefactors, and,

Throughout Frankenstein, Shelley makes use of intertextuality through numerous allusions to the bible. One of these allusions is stated by Frankenstein as he states he “read and re-read [Elizabeth’s] letter and some softened feelings stole into my heart and dared to whisper paradisiacal dreams of love and joy; but the apple was already eaten, and the angel’s arm bared to drive me from all hope” (232). The apple is a reference to the story of Adam and Eve where both Adam and Eve ate an apple from the tree of knowledge. Consequently, Adam and Eve are punished by God for committing such an act he had explicitly stated not to do so. Shelley’s use of this allusion is used to demonstrate the hubris of man and to express the ideas of Romanticism by making both the plot of Frankenstein and character development of Frankenstein like that of Adam and Eve’s

Frankenstein is to be “sometimes considered one of the first science fiction novels” (Fox,stacy ”Romantic and Gothic Representation in Frankenstein”). Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley. In this novel the main characters where Victor Frankenstein, his creation the monster, Robert Walton, Elizabeth Lavenza, Alphonse Frankenstein, and Henry Clerval. Frankenstein starts out with a normal boy named Victor Frankenstein who discovers an early interest in science. Victor later goes off to college to study science and ends up creating a monster. Throughout the novel the monster is stereotyped by his looks and is traumatized and goes for revenge against his creator when Victor refuses to make him a

Mary Shelley was raised in an intellectual environment as both of her parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, were the important radical thinkers. She was encouraged to read widely and was exposed to celebrated writers such as John Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley and classical writers including Ovid. She skillfully interweaves allusions and direct quotations from these writers’ works as deftly as Frankenstein creates his Monster. Just as he infuses ’a spark of being into the lifeless thing’ - Mary Shelley infuses her gothic novel with intertextuality.

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, references many other works of literature in her renowned book. To name a few of the referenced works there were John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the Greek “Prometheus myth”, and the widely known poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Each of these allusions gave a new meaning to Shelley’s story, affecting how each of the readers interpreted her words.

Frankenstein is structure like a story within a story. The story begins with discovery of a strange and the stranger telling us about the main character. Mary Shelley introduces us to Walton first, using it as a frame device, in which the tale is told to us but someone who reads it or hears it from someone else. Shelley also uses literary devices where she allows the letters to tell the story. She uses letter between Walton, Victor sister, mother and father.

A romantic life full of pain and abandonment could only be given the monstrous form of "Frankenstein." Mary Shelley 's life gave birth to an imaginary victim full of misery and loneliness and placed him as the protagonist of one of her most famous and greatest works of art. As most people would assume, he is not just a fictional character, but in fact a creature who desperately demonstrates Shelley 's tragedies and losses during the age of the Romantic Era. Since Mary Shelley 's birth there have been numerous losses in her life. One extremely dominating event in Shelley 's life was the death of her mother. Soon after, her father remarried and Shelley entered a battle as the victim of a fight for love. In her

The Symbolism of the Monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is one of the most famous and controversial novels in literature. The relationship between Victor Frankenstein and the Monster require the reader to pay a deep attention and analysis of the symbolism of the Monster itself in the novel. Readers come up with different and many assumptions and ideas about what the Monster really symbolizes. Some readers tend to assume that the Monster represents the failure in rising up our children. On the other hand, others argue that the Monster symbolizes disabled people and others believe that it stands for freed slaves.

Mary Shelley creates an allegory between the community’s reaction to the monster and human nature. The monster physically appeared different from humans; therefore he was rejected by society to the point where he was the target for objects being thrown at him and scared the villagers to the point where they fainted. The monster acknowledges his difference when he said “its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes” (104). The community’s reaction is an allegory to human nature to reject the one’s who are different. Ordinary people are raised to accept those who are like them and avoid the outcasts, therefore the monster is unable to find acceptance among the community.

Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein conceptualise how the confusion between central character’s appearances and the reality of their personality marginalise the capacity for independence from that character. The unique implementation of characterisation, setting, and symbolism are used by both authors in their respective texts to illuminate the complexity of human relationships both with each other and with themselves. Characterisation is used in both texts to explore how protagonists are unknowingly trapped in the preconceived ideas about their appearance held by society. Ibsen and Shelly use the social setting of both texts to explore how the independence of an individual can promote a change in societal views. Additionally, both authors utilise symbolism in their texts to communicate how the characters view their situation and to incorporate foreshadowing within the texts. Ibsen’s naturalistic modern tragedy and Shelley’s gothic novel both examine the relationships between the protagonists and the culture they were created in to explore how a society can marginalise a person by their appearance.