The Creature is portrayed in the novel outright as masculine, and he certainly does have many masculine characteristics, such as his muscles and height, but he does share some feminine features as well. For example, outwardly, he is described as having long, “lustrous black, and flowing” hair (35). This long, beautiful hair is common to females, and it seems to stand out against his muscular frame. Consequently, he has conflicting hyper masculinity and femininity. This is highlighted by his emotions and behavior. When he sees the moon, he recognizes its beauty and decides it brings him “pleasure” (71). This is emotional enjoyment of nature is again driven home when he first sees birds and hears them chirping, for he is “delighted” by “that …show more content…
He is ashamed of his creation and he treats the Creature with disrespect and visceral disgust. Immediately after creating him, Victor abandons his creation which he sees as a “demoniacal corpse to which [he] had so miserably given life” (36). He leaves the Creature to grow up and survive all on his own, and when he needed guidance he could find none for his creator had left him. As a result, he is left to fend for himself and find his own way in a society that does not accept him, leading to his growing hatred and desire for revenge for the mistreatment. For the Creature recognizes that “no father had watched [his] infant days” nor did he have a mother to help raise him, rather even from the beginning he was alone (84). This realization brings about immediate sorrow to the Creature as all he wants and desires, acceptance, seems to be out of reach. This familial life is very different than what Safie encountered in her journey for acceptance. For while she is let into a beautiful family unit and is immediately enveloped in love and joy, the Creature, even from the beginning is surrounded by negativity and sorrow, as a result of Victor’s revulsion to his work of art. This leads to a very different outcome for the two characters, as they find their way in the world. The two grow from knowing nothing about the way the world works to learning German and the way that society works. While this knowledge breeds only goodness in Safie, it leads to the Creature becoming vengeful and despondent as he recognizes that he has no place in
The Creature symbolizes the war between passion and responsibility with the effects of society. Victor abandons his responsibility for his passion, the creature, this begins when Victor goes away to ingolstadt to increase his knowledge in the field of anatomy and gets lost in his project of piecing together a non-living creature. When he finishes with his Creature victor states “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body” (Shelley 43). “-For this i had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation” (Shelley 43). Victor says he has deprived himself of sleep thus causing his health to decrease, this is an example of victor abandoning responsibility for for his passion “by being connected with the favourite projects and passions of the times Victors health declined rapidly ( Baldick).” When Victor begins his creation in ingolstadt, he locks himself away from his social life. Inside his apartment he is away from family and any social ties, causing his mental health to decline rapidly. Victor abandons his passion, the Creature, when he thinks through the eyes of society causing his responsibility for the Creature to fall to next to nothing. Victors first impression of his creation is, “Now that i had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.”(Shelley 43). Victor judges his creation based off of its appearance instead of its thoughts much like society has always done. Victor doesn't give the Creature a chance and instead abandons it, leaving it to its own devices. Here in the story the Creature is depleted of all its rights simply because of its appearance, this throws shade on society simply because society shapes who we are as
The creature's physical grotesqueness makes the creature unable to attain affection from the human societies. The creature is initially rejected by his creator, who is the closest resemblance to a mother or father figure. Despite this relationship, Victor finds the creature to be a "miserable monster" (39). Consequently, as soon as life is present within the creature, Victor abandons his child. Victor claims that he "escaped, and rushed down the stairs" (40) away from the
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
What makes us human? Is it a beating heart and living flesh? Is it encompassing advanced psychological and social qualities? The classic gothic novel, Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley and the modern horror novel, Warm Bodies, written by Issac Marion have lead many readers to question the complexity of human nature. Both novels explore several principal themes that develop the reader’s understanding of what it means to be human. We are miraculous creatures who are capable of both good and evil; humans are intricate beings who depend on love for survival, some can be troubled by or lack remorse, and in some cases, our actions can be motivated by fear. Throughout both novels, the main characters struggle with these aspects of human nature.
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
In Mary Shelley's novel, Victor Frankenstein suffers an extreme psychological crisis following his violation of what is considered a fundamental biological principle. His creation of life undermines the role of women in his life and the role of sexuality, and allows existing misogynist and homosexual tendencies to surface. Victor represses what he has uncovered about himself, and it merges into a cohesive whole in his psyche that becomes projected on the instrument of revelation, the monster.
The fight for domination amongst the sexes is a battle as old as civilization, where the ideas of gender hierarchies first began. These conflicts often manifest themselves unwittingly through literature, showing subtle signs of deeper tension that has ensued for centuries. The struggle between masculine and feminine becomes apparent through Frankenstein, a battle that results in the death of the potentially most powerful figure in the book. Frankenstein yields characters motivated by complicated thinking, specifically the title character, Victor Frankenstein. Victor is a brilliant 19th century Swiss scientist who succeeds in generating life with electricity, creating a creature that
Frankenstein; Or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley conveys that stories are dangerous because they impose social norms by enforcing restrictive gender roles that society makes impossible to reconcile. Gender roles dictate the life one should live and one’s value to society, and these restrictions ruin the creature’s life in Frankenstein due to his inability to find a fulfilling role to play in the world he lives. As William Shakespeare once wrote, “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players” (3.6.80); the creature’s inability to find reconciliation between male or female normative roles he learns through stories leads to his ostracization. He recognizes that the world is a story, and yet he is not even offered
It is Victor's story that truly exposes the true theme of the story, with him speaking of his days as a child and his first friendship with the girl his parents adopted. He lives a fine life, full of joy and happiness with friend plentiful. When he goes to college he is without friends, but soon befriends one of the professors and engaged in lengthy conversations with him. This isn't the same friendship as before, lacking the real love and companionship of his family, and he soon begins work on his creation. He so overwhelmed by the idea of creating a perfect person he is blinded from the deformity of the creature. When the creature is finished he examines his work and is mortified by it, running and hiding he escapes the creature that soon wanders away. Soon after Victor becomes sick and deathly, he shuns society and people and is almost dead when his friend Clerval arrives at the college. Clerval nurses Victor back to health, but Victor isn't physically sick, he has just
The author of The Canterbury Tales is Geoffrey Chaucer. The publishing time of The Canterbury Tales is in the late 1400’s. The Canterbury Tales is about a group of middle-class people who are going on a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Thomas à Becket. On the way Chaucer is giving explanations of each of the pilgrims. The pilgrims are going to tell two stories on the way there and two stories on the way back. Unfortunately, Chaucer did not live long enough to finish the story. Two of the pilgrims are the Friar and the Summoner. The Friar is a worse person than the Summoner. While the Friar and the Summoner are alike in that they do not follow their jobs’ rules, they are different because of who likes and dislikes them.
Can you imagine Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein, the great work of literature, without, for example, such female characters as Mrs. Margaret Saville, Elizabeth Lavenza, and Justine Moritz? In this case the novel will have no meaning. All the women help to develop the plot, and without them Frankenstein will lose its spirit. Although these heroines have a lot in common in their characters: they are all strong-willed, kind, careful, and selfless, at the same time, each of them is unique, and each plays her own role in the novel. Mrs. Margaret Saville is the woman to whom the narrator tells the story. Elizabeth Lavenza is the beloved of Victor Frankenstein. Justine Moritz is the heroine who is accused by mistake of murdering
In the novel Frankenstein, the author Mary Shelley reinforced the role of female nature in a book that is predominantly male-oriented. The female character is an underlying feature throughout the whole novel. For example, when Victor Frankenstein created his Monster from dead body parts, he disregarded the laws of female reproduction. Both Anne K. Mellor and Jonathon Bate argue that Victor defiled the feminine nature when he created his Monster from unnatural means. Mellor argued in her essay, “Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein,” that Victor eliminated the necessity to have females at all (355). There will not be a need for females if new beings are created in a laboratory. The disruption of mother nature is one of the novel’s original sins (479). In Bate’s essay, “Frankenstein and the State of Nature,” he argued that Victor Frankenstein broke the balance between female principles of maternity and mother nature (477). Frankenstein broke nature and undermined the role of females. The argument of Mellor was more persuasive than the discussion of Bate because she was able to provide more evidence that Victor Frankenstein dishonored the role of female nature.
The 2016 United States Presidential election brought out the worst in people, hope turned into fear and the American citizens were divided on who would ease their fear. The Republican candidate, Donald Trump, an outsider to politics, his outspoken nature only helped his campaign. Just when the people thought he could not say or do anything worse, he would defy the odds and top his previous offensive comment with something even more offensive. The Democrat candidate, Hillary Clinton, has been active in politics for the past few decades, her roles in government include Senator and Speaker of the House. While many times previous experience would help a candidate, this only hurt her and eventually led to her demise. This election will go down in
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
The past three years of my life feel like the only part of my life where I have truly lived. The massive majority of my most cherished memories and greatest challenges have taken place within the last few years. On December 26th 2015 my mom surprised me with a intro flight at my local flight school as a Christmas present; it was a simple flight up and down the Miami coastline at five hundred feet right as the sun was setting, and I was hooked the instant my instructor Rudy gave me the yoke. Seeing the city lights ignite the coast as we calmly trekked over downtown Miami was an image that incited a sense of wonder and longing in me that I had never experienced before. That short one hour flight went by in an instant, and before I knew it I was back one week later to begin my journey to where I am today. Over the course of two and one half months I balanced sophomore year of highschool with my private pilot training, finishing two weeks after my seventeenth birthday on March 31st. The next week I started my instrument and breezed through it in two months, and I quickly moved onto my commercial. The biggest obstacle of my commercial training was Time. By the time I was done with my instrument and ready to knock out my next stage of training, I learned that one needed to be eighteen in order to take the checkride. This happened to work out nicely, as it allowed me to focus more on school and enjoying my accomplishments with some relaxing cross-countries to build time.