Human Body Determination In Frankenstein

Victor is also a villain in a Archetype sense. Victor was trying to play god, when he created the creature, and that is something he shouldn't have done, because humans can't become too powerful, even though they always try. Victor became so obsessed with creating life, that it clouded his judgment, and took up all of his time and energy. On page 66, just before Justine's trial, Victor thought to himself, "During the whole of this wretched mockery of justice I suffered living torture. It was to be whether the result of my curiosity and lawless devices would cause the death of two of my fellow beings." This line shows two things, first Victor knew that Justine, and William's death was his fault. Also, he knew that his experiments, shouldn't have been done, and were against the laws of nature and god. On page 39, Victor says, "Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source, many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me." This quote shows how Victor wanted to be like a god. He wanted to be admired, and praised as a species creator. And this want is another reason he was the real villain of Frankenstein.

The first of Frankenstein’s flaws, is his foolishness. Victor is foolish in various aspects, more specifically his intention to bring life from the dead. Throughout history it is a known fact, when someone or something has died, there is no hope in bringing life back to them. It is one of the fundamental laws of life and Frankenstein is foolish to think he can surpass it. To his credit, he is indeed able to breathe life into the creature but this is also where his

But what are we to make of Victor Frankenstein? We know that he is in fact a human being. However, he displays several traits that lessen the level of his humanity. The first of which being his desire to make his creature in the first place. By bestowing life

Throughout Frankenstein, Victor proves to be quite an egotistical person. Victor’s actions will sometimes be selfish and not as noble as he would like others to believe. He creates the monster with a desire to obtain awe and fame and to make sure that his name will be remembered throughout history. “… a light so brilliant and wondrous… that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret” (Shelley 37). While this discovery of Victor’s may be groundbreaking, he fails to think of the negative consequences, only thinking of himself and what this could potentially

This experiment places him out of society and in isolation for months, showing his obsession with creating something that is his own. In addition, Frankenstein knows he has the ability to create the monster where he "[emphasizes] the necessary deference to nature that empirical science lacked, [Shelley] found her portrayal of Victor's artificial human complicated by the materialism of his genesis" (Willis 2). Victor's arrogance in knowledge led him to create the monster only because he knew he could. The monster is purely experimental and Victor creates the monster because his knowledge overcame his decision between morals and achievements.

Taking God’s role into your own hands proves too much for someone to take on and Victor could not escape the negative repercussions of his actions. Victor Frankenstein is the protagonist in the 1831 novel Frankenstein. Victor unnaturally creates a monster from the bodies of the deceased. This creation would haunt and torture him for the rest of his life. Victor Frankenstein foolishly assumed that he could take the role of God into his own hands and create life from death. Victor shows the negative effects of playing God through Victor’s mental state, his negligence of the creature, and the behavior of the creature.

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, the protagonist Victor Frankenstein is portrayed as a morally dubious character. Passionate about the natural sciences and interested in it since a young age, he dedicates years to the project of creating life. Painstakingly piecing together bit by bit body parts from dead people scrounged up from labs, he succeeds in creating his creature. Once he creates it, however, he is disgusted with it, abandons it, and regrets ever creating it as it slowly goes about killing all those that he loves. Though through the entire piece he refers the creature as a ‘monster’ or a ‘demon’, Victor neglects to take responsibility for his actions or make a serious effort to rectify them.

The book of Genesis was created by God to express his image of companionship, but also bring awareness to the idea of sin. Shelley forms Frankenstein around Genesis, however, she separates the two by stating, “Frankenstein’s monster is created as a test of Frankenstein’s power” (Shelley 34), implying that the monster is simply created to challenge the power of his creator just as God’s power was challenged by Adam and Eve. Following the creation of the monster, Victor wants absolutely nothing to do with it. The monster is composed of decomposing human bodies and therefore it is not anyone’s ideal image and has no one to look up to in the aspect of, “let us make man in our image, according to our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Due to the monster being created with the limps and interior of dead bodies, it promotes an extraordinary element of not having an original origin. Victor takes advantage of the fact that the monster is not a

Oscar Wilde uses his witty criticism of Victorian immorality to argue what true morality is. In this period of time it was normal for people to lie and it was okay. He takes a satirist view on how the people of this time period generally acted. Victor Frankenstein believed he could create something beautiful out of death, but ended up creating destruction. It did not go quite as planned though, Victor was instantly horrified when he saw the monster he had created.

The two dominant forces of our universe are man and nature, they need to be existing in a delicate equilibrium. One should not go beyond the other’s dividing line, we as humans should not meddling with nature and cross the line. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the point is emphasized that the balance between man and Nature must be preserved. In the book, Dr. Victor Frankenstein gives life to a creature constructed from the parts of dead humans. The creature was a hideous abomination of unnatural origin, which makes him an outcast that has no place in our world. The creature is fueled by the hatred and violence of humanity, thus both the creature and Victor

People today would undoubtedly say that they know who the real monster in Frankenstein would be. It is the creature that Victor Frankenstein has created, that killed everyone that he loved dearly. But, looking beyond the outer appearance of the monster, it seems evident that what he began as was not a monster. It was society’s quick assumption of a monster based on appearance, resulting in extreme isolation of the creature, that caused him to become a monster. Victor Frankenstein, an ambitious scientist who thirsts for knowledge, is actually the real monster in this horror novel by Mary Shelley, because he possesses many of the characteristics that define what a monster is.

With the growth of science and technology, there exists a growth of concern over whether or not people will attempt to play God with such advancements and what consequences may result. Genetic engineering, cloning, body modifications, and other fields in biological technology are all examples of fields that are achieving amazing advancements in an extremely rapid manner. Progress in science causes people to question their own humanity and what it means to be human, as well as whether the right to act as a God is a right a human has. The main character of the Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein is inspired to advance the field of science by attempting to resurrect the dead. It is argued that by doing this, Victor was in fact, playing God.

Frankenstein creates this hideous, brutish, ogre-like monster after years of hard-labor, and dismayed at what all his questing for knowledge brought upon him, Victor immediately deserts the monster, saying: “For this, I had deprived myself of rest and health...but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (43). This brings into question how much a creator owes to its creation, and superficially, one can say that Frankenstein deserted the monster when he had to bear the responsibility of training him and preparing him for a life that would come close to human life, but it is hard to blame Victor for what he has done. Spurred on by the quest for knowledge and ascendency into godlike status by being the man to defeat death, Frankenstein is simply a horribly misguided scientist who created a mistake. Yes, it is a mistake, but who is to say that is his problem to take care of? The creator can always create and abandon its creation, that is its right.

Can science go too far when it equips man with tools to manipulate life? Some of the underlying ethical dilemmas presented in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein are similar to ones we struggle with today, such as selective abortion. Shelley’s doomed creature mirrors the devastating result of bringing an unwanted offspring into the world, then shirking responsibility for it thereafter. The practice of playing God and choosing who does and who does not “earn” life ultimately results in profound negative moral consequences.