Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a Tale of a Struggle Between Good and Evil

In Shelley’s Frankenstein, the monster commits a number of immoral acts out of rage. These actions are directly related to the monsters creation and upbringing. The burden of fault for the monsters actions rests on Victor Frankenstein’s shoulders alone.

Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein primarily focuses on Victor and his monster, but women also play a part. There are three major female figures in the novel; the housekeeper for the Frankenstein family: Justine, Victor’s “adopted cousin” and later wife: Elizabeth, and the never completed female monster. To both Victor and the monster woman are desired objects that offer comfort and companionship, but as the novel goes on, women become targets for revenge. This goes to show that the women in Frankenstein prove to be both powerless and powerful when it comes to dealing with the men that surround them.

In the infamous novel, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley, there have been a variety of recurring themes throughout the book, one of them being good versus evil. Good versus evil is a popular theme that appears in several movies, TV shows, as well as literature itself. According to Wikipedia.com, it means: “[...] the battle between ideologies, with one side Good, and the other Evil. Another variation is the inner struggle in characters (and by extension, humans in reality) between good and evil.” This theme is specifically crucial to the plot because it ultimately asks the readers what it means to be “human.” Shelley supports her representation by manipulating society’s behavior, questioning the limits of humans, and

In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, the unnamed creature brings terror to civilians and commits horrific acts against his creator, Victor Frankenstein. However, his redeemable acts of kindness makes his character morally ambiguous. He struggles between doing well and causing trouble because of isolation, the excerpts of society, and his pursuit for love.

Victor Frankenstein worried about everyone else and playing God, rather than trying to do right, morally. Victor had to go through a lot of steps and difficulties to create the monster. After the creation of the monster, everyone including Victor abandoned him. Victor refused to create a girl creature to avoid a lot of problems, but he did not realize the hell the monster would end up causing him. Victor regrets trying to play God because his action would cause him great troubles and consequences.

Frankenstein is a classic written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley that has captured readers’ imaginations since the nineteenth century. The moral of Frankenstein was that a lack of companionship will lead to self-destruction. Lilo and Stitch, the Disney adapted version, has the same moral. Each teach the same, basic lesson that companionship and friends are generally positive things, yet they told different stories. Their stories, at first glance, are almost unrecognizable from each other. When comparing the two versions, one might ask how the morals remained the same despite the drastic alterations that Disney made. However, if one were to take a look at the changes that Disney made he or she would understand how. In Lilo and Stitch, Stitch (Disney’s equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster) is a protagonist while the monster is the antagonist in the original, Stitch makes friends whereas Frankenstein’s monster suffers throughout the entire book without so much as a friendly gesture, and as a result, the endings are completely different as well.

Shelley uses the structure of the novel to explore human nature, clouding the reader’s perceptions of good and evil, right and wrong, man and monster. By creating multiple unreliable narrators, she establishes that nothing is certain, positioning the readers to question their own ideas about who is really in the wrong throughout the novel. Frankenstein and the creature are seen as opposites on a scale of good and evil, master and slave, god and devil, however these positions change throughout the novel. Frankenstein wants the readers to see the creature as a monster, but through the characters narratives and reflections, we see that Frankenstein did not actually create a monster. Frankenstein made a man and turned him into a monster, and the

Throughout the novel, “Frankenstein,” the “monster” was seen as hideous. As a result, many including the creator himself did not give the “monster” a chance and portrayed him as evil. Rather than looking at his personality, they looked at his outward appearance, which scared them off and made them assume he was a “monster.” When readers, including myself, read this story, we feel disappointed about how during this time everything revolved based upon looks and not on what really mattered like charisma. Overall he is portrayed as an evil, scary creature. When Victor describes him he is so harsh and cruel it makes him seem to be a monster. “He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks,” (Shelley 59) this phrase proves how when Victor describes the monster he did not care to think about what the monster was trying to say because he was too scared of his horrible looks.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is very much a commentary on the Enlightenment and its failure to tame the human condition through reason. The human condition can be defined as the unique features which mold a human being. The creature is undoubtedly a victim of this predicament. He grapples with the meaning of life, the search for gratification, the sense of curiosity, the inevitability of isolation, and the awareness of the inescapability of death. These qualities and his ceaseless stalking of his master conjure up the metaphor that he is the shadow of the Enlightenment. Indeed, the Enlightenment is represented through Frankenstein whereas the creature is the embodiment of everything it shuns. These include nature, emotion, and savagery. The two characters are understood as counterparts and yet strikingly similar at the same time. The creature is considered a monster because of his grotesque appearance. Frankenstein on the other hand is a monster of another kind: his ambition, secrecy, and selfishness alienate him from human society. He is eventually consumed by an obsessive hatred of his creation. Both characters also commit primordial crimes. Although rationality pervades through Frankenstein's endeavours, it can be argued that he becomes less human the more he tries to be God. The secret of life lies beyond an accepted boundary from which none can return. By creating life Frankenstein ironically sets the stage for his own destruction as well as that of his family. The

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley has many main ideas, whether it's about injustice, feminism, parental responsibility, the danger of too much knowledge, the cost of revenge, the relationship between man and God, etc., they all serve a certain purpose. Out of all of those main ideas, the one that sticks out the most is injustice. Injustice comes from the Latin phrase that represents “not right”, and it is the practice of being unjust or unfair (Injustice - Dictionary Definition). Throughout the book, Mary Shelley wanted to show that injustice is caused due to the fear of what is different (“Shelley, Mary - Justice and Injustice”). Many characters in this story all have different characteristics, whether it is due to their look, personality, childhood, current situations, and more. A lot of the characteristics that differ from each other have led to many injustice situations. Even though injustice might not always be bad, many examples of unnecessary injustice are shown throughout “Frankenstein” due to undeserving punishment, violating the rights of others, and unfair treatment.

 "What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?" This question, posed by Captain Robert Walton on page 22 of Mary Shelley's immortal Frankenstein, lies susceptible to interpretation to mean the ambition of man in one sense, but in another, the collective persecution and prejudice inherent in mankind.

It it conflict that controls the life of Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein - his relationships, work, and even his own thoughts are rife with it. Conflict between Victor and Elizabeth, Victor and Clerval, and the Creature are what drive the events of this film - conflict is integral to the plot, the development of characters, and conflict is what shows the director’s purpose, warning the viewer of the dangers of obsession.

The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, is a story about how important having a family is to some, but also judging someone based on their appearance. Victor Frankenstein starts the novel by describing his childhood with his loving and supportive family. Family is very important to him because he did not have many friends growing up. While Frankenstein is away at school he starts to become very depressed and you see his attitude towards his family and his life change. Being away at school, he creates a “monster” by using different pieces of corpses and that becomes the only thing that matters to him until he sees how hideous it is. He immediately hates his creation just because of how he looks. Frankenstein begins to abandon everyone and thing in his life because of his obsession with the idea of glory and science, causing the novel to go from Romanticism to Gothic. The “monster” finds a family living in a cottage, by watching all winter he learns how a family should love and accept others. By seeing this, Frankenstein’s creations understand what was taken from him, and will do whatever he has to do to have a family of his own.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has become a classic in modern literature. Her tale is full of moral lessons that encompass a wide variety of subjects but one of the most prevalent is the theme of knowledge and its pursuit. Frankenstein, Walton, and the Monster all have an appetite for acquiring knowledge and actively pursue their perspective interests, but it soon turns to the obsessive and proves to be dangerous. Each of the character’s desires demonstrates to be detrimental to them when no boundaries are established. Through the use of consequences, Shelley’s Frankenstein shows that the relentless and obsessive pursuit of knowledge can lead to dangerous and disastrous situations.

In the gothic novel Frankenstein, author Mary Shelley offers an ominous tale of science gone terribly wrong using the theme of the father and son relationship that also goes terribly wrong. Though Victor Frankenstein does not give birth per se to the Monster, Frankenstein is for all intents and purposes the Monster's father as he brings him to life via his scientific knowledge. Once the Monster is alive he looks to Frankenstein to protect him as a father would, but Frankenstein who is mortified by his creation shuns him. The longer the Monster lives without Frankenstein's love and the more he discovers what he is missing, the angrier he gets and he sets out on a mission to destroy Victor Frankenstein. In Frankenstein, Shelley's purpose is to reveal what happens to society at large when individuals fail in their duties as parents.