Mary Shelley 's ' Frankenstein '

The creature is telling Victor how he feels about his isolation, “You, my creator abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow-creatures, who owe me nothing?” (Shelley 114). However, Victor uses Logos for his response, even though the creature already assumed he would say this, which continues to express his logical response in the story. It creates a commanding tone when Victor expresses, “all men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!” (Shelley 113).

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

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

Victor obsession with his creation represents the dark side of ambition. By creating the monster, “darkness” follow him wherever he goes through the representation of deaths and daunting weather like lightning. After his release from prison, he saw around him “nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me” (Shelley 160). By trying to turn himself into a god through the creation of the monster, that is, the unnatural, Victor is deprived of joy and is tormented by fevers, anxiety, and stress because he had thrown nature into the state of imbalance. Rather than feeling a sense of accomplishment through his scientific achievement, he lives in fear and guilt knowing that he is the cause for the destruction of his

Victor announces in chapter one that, “whose future it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me” pg. 38. Victor feels that he does not owe anyone anything, but people owe him. He thinks that if he creates the creature we would receive accolades by the creature and others. Mary Shelly gives the spiritual message on entitlement. God created men to love others and to aim to act more like Jesus did. Entitlement leads to spiritual laziness and laziness in general. Mankind is called to go out and help others by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, attending mass, praising God, and putting others before themselves. God does not anyone anything. God sent down his only son to die for mankind’s sins. Entitlement damages not only a relationship with God but others. God created mankind to work hard and have faith. Entitlement prohibits individuals from using their God given talents and caring for Gods people because the person feels everyone owes them something. In chapter five Victor describes his creator as tall, powerful, muscular and, “his features as beautiful…his hair was of lustrous black and flowing: his teeth of pearly whiteness” pg. 75. Victor sees himself in the creature, and a reflection of how he sees himself. A walking monument. People need to bow down to him and praise him. Victor sees

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.

In the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein is as much as a monster as his creation. They are related in many different ways such as the fact that they are both isolated from society. While the monster isolated from society due to his physical features, Victor is isolated from his family and of his creation of the monster.

The enormous difference in the way Victor views the creature before and after its completion shows that he has an altered state of mind while he works on it. As a result of Victor’s secrecy about his creation, he sacrifices his health and happiness to make a creature that disgusts him.

Knowledge is given to those that understand the power it holds, this power could either destroy or help one in their path to success. In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, we see this idea being practiced by individuals in the novel. However, they are incapable of seeing the dangerous potential outcomes of misunderstanding knowledge and the power it offers, leading to their ruin. We see the suffering as a cause of knowledge through Victor Frankenstein’s creation of life, The Monster’s dream of fitting the norm, and Robert Walton’s dangerous journey to the North. The characters in Frankenstein pursuit of knowledge leads to certain destruction, showing us the potential negative outcomes of misusing knowledge.

This shows Victor even more about the creature and does nothing but make him want to destroy and hate the creature more and more. Victor has a hatred as seen in the novel for the creature from the beginning. One might ask why he is making this creation. He states that his purpose for making the creature is because he wants to make a new race of people. His desire for a new race is not in the right mind though, he is in search of gratitude by making this race. He is craving this sense of thankfulness where he wants people to thank him for making such a great race of creatures. Although, he does not receive this gratitude, he actually recives quite the opposite as people are disgusted by his creature. Throughout the story people such as Victor 's father and his professor go to him and provide him with suggestions and try and help him. Although Victor blatantly brushes them off and acts as he pleases.

What purpose does it serve to have multiple narrators telling a story? In Mary Shelley’s gothic novel, Frankenstein, three main narrators tell the story about the creation of a monster and the events that follow. The job of narrator shifts between Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the monster that Victor creates. As each narrator shares his own recollection of the events that occurred, new facts are introduced to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Although Frankenstein uses multiple narrators to tell the story, it is important to look at the effects it might have on the stories accuracy. In this essay, I will closely examine the motives, differences, and similarities of each narrator to see what influences, if any, they have on the narrative.

Victor’s initial reaction to his creation is the first taste of what the world has to offer the creature, an identity. However, this is not the identity that the creature wishes to posses. He desires to be someone’s son, yet when he goes to Victor for this relationship, he is rejected. In the beginning of the creature’s existence he has "one hand…stretched out" (35) to reach towards his creator. This is parallel to a Sistine Chapel painting in which Adam reaches out to God. However, there is a significant difference in the

Victor Frankenstein's upbringing in a perfect society ultimately led to the destruction of his life which coincided with the lives of those emotionally close to

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