Mary Shelley Garners 'Pity For Victor In Frankenstein'

    Sometimes, in novels like Frankenstein, the motives of the author are unclear.  It is clear however, that one of the many themes Mary Shelley presents is the humanity of Victor Frankenstein's creation.  Although she presents evidence in both support and opposition to the creation's humanity, it is apparent that this being is indeed human.  His humanity is not only witnessed in his physical being, but in his intellectual and emotional thoughts as well.  His humanity is argued by the fact that being human does not mean coming from a specific genetic chain and having family to relate to, but to embrace many of the distinct traits that set humans apart from other animals in this

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

Shelley addresses romantic conventions in Victor to convey his loss of identity. Victor is impatient and restless when constructing the creation, so much, that he does not think about it’s future repercussions. One of the great paradoxes that Shelley’s novel depicts is giving the monster more human attributes than to it’s creator [p. 6 - Interpretations]. This is true as the monster seeks an emotional bond, but Victor is terrified of it’s existence. The monster later reveals, “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurred at and kicked and trampled on [Shelley, p. 224].” Victor’s lack of compassion is rooted from the inability to cope with his reality. He distances himself from others and is induced with fainting spells [Shelley, p. 59]. From this, the nameless creature exemplifies Victor’s attempt to abandon his creation to escape his responsibilities. His creation is described as, ‘wretched devil’ and ‘abhorred monster,’ eliciting that the unobtainable, pitied identity [Shelley, p. 102]. The act of not naming the creature reveals Victor as hateful, and unnaturally disconnected to his own created victim.

Mary Shelley makes us question who really the “monster” is. Is it the creature or Victor? While the creature does commit murder, he does not understand the consequences of his actions. He is like an infant who is unfortunately left to learn about the workings of society, and his place in it, on his own. He has no companions and feels a great sense of loneliness and abandonment. The creature voices his frustration and anger and seems to try to project his feelings of guilt onto Victor, as if to show him that he is the ultimate cause of the creature’s misery while he is simply the victim of Victor’s manic impulse. Shelley utilizes words, phrases, and specific tones when the creature vents his misery to Victor and this evokes, amongst the

Victor does not fuse up that he knew who killed the young boy and the judge convicts Victor’s friend Justine to death. After Justine death, Victor is consumed with the “weight of despair and remorse pressing on my heart” (Shelley pg. 80) the terror of allowing his friend die and the creature to roam free. The way the author (Shelley) painted Victor’s feeling using the words “despair” and “remorse” presents of conscience sorrowful man. The word “despair” gives the audience a negative tone of lost hope. Describing Victor’s pain of distress in the situation he was him in made the audience feel Victor’s pain.“Remorse” is a connotation of realizing his mistake and having regret for the decision he made that allowed Justine to be killed. Meanwhile, the creature explained to Victor after Justine’s death his emotion towards mankind. “All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!” (Shelley pg. 88). The words used to characterized the hatred the creature feels to mankind is severe. The creature depicted mankind as “wretched” people who will be “wretched” forever. The term “wretched” expresses the creature’s angry and mankind are despicable people. The creature justify his answer by explaining that his good actions like saving the young boy and got him shot at by the father. All

Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is book about the importance of human relationships and treating everyone with dignity and respect. The main character of the book is Victor Frankenstein who is a very intelligent man with a desire to create life in another being. After he completes his creation, he is horrified to find that what he has created is a monster. The monster is the ugliest, most disgusting creature that he has ever seen. Victor being sickened by his creation allows the monster to run off and become all alone in the world. Throughout Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses the theme of human relationships to illustrate the bond that man has with other beings and the need for love and affection. The importance of human relationships

To be able to feel sympathy, humans first must be able to read into and understand another’s emotions. Mary Shelley uses this human aspect in her novel Frankenstein, as readers’ emotions are played. Set in the early 1900s, the novel is a recount of Victor Frankenstein’s life as he tells it to Robert Walter, a man leading an exploration to the North Pole. Frankenstein starts his narrative explaining how he was a very curious child, and eventually went off to college and conducted an experiment on his own. Frankenstein ended up creating a monster, which changed Frankenstein’s life for the worse. In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein’s monster earns the reader’s sympathy and pity because after being rejected by his creator he is forced to

Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein revolves around Victor Frankenstein who creates a monster which he ends up abandoning. This leads the monster to torment Victor as a form of revenge and punishment. Shelley uses various rhetorical devices such as similes, strong diction , and emotional appeal in her story to create a well-rounded and intriguing novel with deep meaning. Firstly, one can notice the various similes that Shelley uses in the excerpt. Using similes allow for comparisons which can make reading the novel easier for the reader and can truly help the author showcase a deeper meaning. Shelley states that “men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other’s blood” (Shelley 63). Using this simile allows for Shelley to provide an indepth view of how she feels about men. Reading

Humans are known for bestowing their judgment irrationally and based on the “book cover” of a person, they may degrade their fellow human into the worst positions of the social ladder. Mary Shelley, in her novel Frankenstein, expands on this perspective by using mood and tone to parallel with the circumstances of an event occurring in her novel with shifts throughout the context of the book, symbolized by the changes in nature and seasons. This shift is made frequently between the agonized, desperate, frightful, maybe even suicidal mood and tone with the occurrence of dreadful acts of murder and execution, to the more calming, soothing, optimistic and life-full during a physical and spiritual recovery.

It is possible to view Victor's rejection of his creature as being a comment made upon society by Mary Shelley; the creature is abused, fled from and rejected simply for what it looks like. In life, this is often the case for those who are presented as physical outsiders, something which Shelley may be criticising as a

The use of the strength of emotions in her classic novel Frankenstein empowered Mary Shelley to build a strong connection with its readers and rule their hearts for hundreds of years today. Shelley beautifully incorporated different feelings into her writing to provide visualization of events as the readers read through pages and feel the true essence of the characters’ sensations. Some of the emotions depict the tragedies of Shelley’s own life, thus adding life to the story. In short, Shelley’s Frankenstein is an emotional roller coaster covering a wide range of human emotions from joy and sorrow to hatred and revenge, and highlighting how different experiences of lives modify these sentiments into one another.

A reader's subconscious often disables their ability to notice moral foundations that the author develops through the text; thus, making it difficult for an individual to recognize the value the text holds and its importance. In the article “Why Study Literature?” the author explains that “literature teaches us better courses of action and more effective responses to situations”; essentially he or she says that literature has the ability to shape one’s morals; as it can teach us what do in certain situations and how we should act. Similarly, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the author builds morality in readers by stressing the wrongs of using one’s visual appearance to determine their inner nature. At birth the monster is abandoned for his hideousness, the monster is “endowed with perceptions and passions” (Shelley, Chapter 16) after which he is “cast[ed] as an object for the scorn and horror of mankind” (Shelley, Chapter 16). For example, the monster chases for love when he assists the poor De Lacey family in collecting their lumber, however he is driven out by their horror upon seeing the face of their secret patron for the first time. Looking at this from an aesthetic stance, Shelley appears to be examining our natural tendency to judge a book by its cover. The author manifests the importance of inner beauty rather than one’s outer beauty, for it speaks more sincerely of their qualities as an individual. Had the protagonist realized the creature’s nobility from the

In most people’s minds as of today, there is no question to who the monster is in Mary Shelley’s book, Frankenstein. It is the creature that Viktor Frankenstein created, that murders innocent people. However, when looking beyond the appearance of the creature, it is evident that he did not begin as a monster. Mary Shelley analyzes fundamental and crucial issues in her novel in terms of being able to use science and knowledge for the good of people and not for the satisfaction of personal ambitions without even being able to take responsibility for that. It is also the novel of social rejection based on external looks and inability to accept. It was the extreme misconceptions of humans that resulted in the extreme isolation of Frankenstein’s

Shelley, in giving us Frankenstein as the hero of the Gothic story with its non-realist romantic and dramatic prose and science fiction roots, has given us a broken hero. This helps to ground the reader in the realist aspect of the story. Frankenstein suffers with his nerves, loves and misses his family and constantly worries for their safety. There is friendship and love and even a wedding which all make for a realistic feel. And yet for all that Frankenstein does suffer; the illness brought on by the success of his experiment, the murders of his brother and closest friend, even the death of his wife, it is difficult to remain sympathetic when he so adamantly refuses to feel even a small amount of pity for the creature that he created.

Frankenstein’s monster could not have come out of any other genre of literature of the time, and Frankenstein’s experiments couldn’t have either. Shelley was very aware when creating ‘Frankenstein’ that the language and themes are most definitely gothic. The mysterious, dark and gloomy settings and overall tone of the novel are wonderful examples of Gothic tropes. The psychological effect of gothic literature does take its toll on its readers, the language and events are exhausting throughout ‘Frankenstein’. They are torn mentally and emotionally between mankind and his experiments in which he claims will do the greater good and the creature, who becomes abandoned and confused with no understanding of mankind. Subtler is the affective nature of Victor’s comfort with abandonment. We deeply sympathise with the monster despite him being a cold murder as we have an understanding that he is retaliating due to the harsh actions of his father/creator. Similar to Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is Mathew Lewis’s “ The Monk”, adopts the idea of an almighty controller who the reader is intended to trust, eventually revealing himself to be a sinner.