Victor’s selfish desire to control life through science leaves him in a predicament that he is unable to fix. His immediate regret in constructing his Creature is based from a shallow point rather than a moral one, causing him to abandon what was once his beloved project. After slaving endlessly for two years Victor looks upon his Creature with horror. “[He] had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that [he] had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished,”(Shelley 43). It was, in fact, a dream that Victor worked towards. He hoped to create a being from the dead that bestowed life with his own hands and somehow has no remnants of death. As a child, he was looked upon like a God by his parents and still in youth he maintained control over his dear Elizabeth. In his mind, it seemed attainable to be a creator next and his goal of creating life itself has failed in his eyes because it is hideous. The Creature has been successfully formed and yet Victor looks at him with “breathless horror and disgust filled [in his] heart,”(Shelley 43). Victor is described as wealthy and handsome, therefore having no empathy for an unattractive being, even one he brought into existence. He unapologetically flees and dismisses the Creature, allowing an innocent mind to enter a chaotic and judgmental world. Victor, fully aware that he has unleashed an unnatural being, makes no effort to correct the damage he has done. Shelley uses Victor as a demonstration for the
While attempting to uncover the meaning of life and death, and though he believed his experiments would further the paths of science, Victor fails to see the potential consequences of “bestowing animation upon lifeless matter” (Shelley 37). This, in turn, creates a monster. After his “great” experiment, Victor spends his life in grief. Despite this, he manages to belittle his creation, and act superior to him, claiming that “I [Victor] will not hear you. There can be no community between you [the creature] and me; we are enemies” (Shelley 84). Even later on, when assured by the creature himself that Victor would be left alone if he creates a female counterpart, Victor cannot see past the shreds of pride he has left and refuses, causing the death of his family and loved ones. It’s Victor’s pride and his fear of the creature that clouds his judgement and in the end leads to his
After the death of Frankenstein, the Creature is met face-to-face with Walton, and here the Creature meets his final challenge of communicating and addressing a human who might have compassion for him. Upon seeing and hearing from the Creature, Walton experiences similar reactions as Frankenstein upon first communicating with the Creature. His physical appearance once again stains with utter disgust any attempt at showing benevolence: “Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness. I shut my eyes involuntarily” (Shelley 211). Once this reaction takes place, the Creature’s words do cause a small time of wavering of compassion for Walton, although ultimately he does reject the Creature once
Frankenstein follows Victor Frankenstein’s triumph as he reanimates a dead body, and then details his guilt for creating such a thing. When the creation realizes how he came to be, and is rejected by mankind, he seeks revenge on his creator’s loved ones. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley portrays Victor Frankenstein as the true monster of the story through the use of literary devices revealing the characteristics that Frankensteins and monsters share, and shows how Frankenstein’s irresponsibility leads to his monstrous labeling.
The monster notices that humans are afraid of him because of his appearance, he feels embarrassed of himself, as humans do when they don’t seem to be accepted. He admires the De Lacey Family that lives in the cottage, he also learns from them, and hopes to have companion as they do. The monster is like humans, as mentioned, in the way that he wants someone to listen and care about him. He is discovering the world and his capacities, he seeks knowledge and understand plenty aspects of life by learning how to speak and read. “The gentle manners and beauty of the cottagers greatly endeared them to me; when they were unhappy, I felt depressed; when they rejoiced, I sympathized in their joys” (Shelley 47). The monster developed feelings and emotions as humans. The creature is different from humans also, since he never got to grow up as a normal human, and
monster avoid pain again and how he is able to sit and think about how
Frankenstein is a classic horror novel, but with a twist of many other genres. Written by Mary Shelley, it was a novel which mixed many exciting elements, such as horror, drama and romance. The story follows a young doctor named Victor Frankenstein, who has an obsession to reincarnate the dead, but his attempts at this fail horribly, and Victor finds himself in deep peril, as the monster stalks him throughout the world. I aim to investigate the issue, however, of who is the true monster in Frankenstein. The monster or Frankenstein himself?
In Mary Shelley´s Gothic novel, Frankenstein, the Monster once claimed, “The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.” Frankenstein, since the 1910 film adaptation, has known a series of several adaptations that changed drastically, not only the plot but one of the main characters, the Monster, from stealing its creator´s name to being portrayed as a cold villain. Though, in the original storyline, the biggest threat to society is the creator itself, the one pretending to play as God, Victor Frankenstein. This essay will discuss the nature of the main characters of the novel and conclude who is the “real monster” in the end.
There is a myth that every creature on this planet is one half of a whole and must be completed by another half. Sometimes it takes that other half coming into their life to make them realize the truth about themselves and to see hidden parts of their unconscious minds that they otherwise would not have noticed themselves. Mary Shelley, an accomplished writer during the Romantic Era of English Literature, is the author of Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein is a young man with a hunger and passion for knowledge and science. He wants to do what no one has ever done before- create human life all on his own. Victor creates an eight foot tall, grotesquely terrifying monster that after continuous rejection from society, decides to take revenge on the man that gave him life. Shelley shows throughout this novel how two mortal enemies can be surprisingly similar and even act as mirrors of each other.
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
Plato once said, “To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.” In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley we see how The Creature’s nature slowly develops through his interactions in the world. Many of these interaction were greatly influenced by Victor, his creator, who left him to fend for himself as a newborn. The Creature was created a pure being, but Victor’s constant rejection and negative reactions pushed The Creature to its final revengeful nature.
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
The creature relates to Dorian as they both act unruly and engage in acts that Society refuses to agree with. Both are responsible for multiple deaths, and are responsible for ruining other's lives until they both commit suicide. They even commit murder. The creature achieves this while learning who he is and Dorian attains it by virtue of his own choice. The creature is trying to discover himself and Dorian bases his life off of the pursuit of forever youth and beauty. Both destroy everything in their paths to reach their ideal life. Physically, the creature relates more to Dorian’s portrait than Dorian himself. Dorian possesses hubris attitudes and also Hedonism developing from his excessive confidence in is physical appearance, while the
The monsters ability to cause the reader to sympathize with him during his life is based on the theory in Ronald Brittons article “What Made the Monster Monsterous”. That creature is like a child who has lost his parents and is left to fend for himself, since there isn’t anybody who wants him. These people would view him as a burden on their lives and as the baby had lost its mother during birth the others will see him as a murderer and therefore a monster like the creature is viewed as a monster in Mary Shelley’s book “Frankenstein”. The creature is viewed as a monster because he is different from others around him, and has a malformed body that frightens the people that he comes into contact with. The creature was turned away by Victor
It is vital that you know who the real monster in the Frankenstein book, Victor Frankenstein is the number one contender for this position. He creates a monster, but who knows if the actual monster he created is the true monster in this story. In later chapters the true monster is revealed, Victor Frankenstein takes fault for the deaths of Justine, William, and Henry even though he wasn’t the actual cause of their death. Although the monster was created by Victor, he is still horrid and disgusted by how his monsters look and abandons his creation because of his unpleasant demeanor. Victor didn’t accept the monster and decided to avoid coming into contact with the monster, woefully the monster later commits an evil act and kills Justine
British Literature Knight 3 20 March 2016 The Gap Between Man and Monster When most people think of monsters, their mind immediately wanders to images of grotesque beasts, horrid creatures, and the myths of legend. Monsters are commonly associated with inhuman physicality and emotion, and throughout history have often been characterized solely by their physical aspects. Contrary to popular belief, however, the difference between a monster and a man has nothing to do with physical qualities. A monster is not born, but is a direct result of the environment it was developed in.