Rejection In Frankenstein

While Creature is full of humanity and has a thirst for knowledge, his longing for acceptance in society is met with constant rejection. Through this rejection, it sparks anger into the Creature for his irresponsible creator, Victor Frankenstein. Creature’s anger leads to greater tragedies for Victor. The greater of the tragedies are the murdering of innocent people including Victor’s family that is seen to be the fault of Creature since he is the one who murdered them. If Victor did not abandon the Creature and had taught him murder was not morally correct, Creature would not have committed the heinous acts.When Creature was first theoretically born, he was introduced into the world in a very harsh way. Metaphorically, Creature starts out into the world as a newborn, needing a parent 's guidance and teachings. Victor abandons him immediately with no sense of direction. Creature, after his “birth”, approaches Victor with a hand of longing for compassion. “He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they maybe called, were fixed on me...He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out” (Shelley 35). Victor instead of showing acceptance immediately runs away at the sight of him.

Like a baby, Frankenstein’s creature was born innocent and inexperience of how society works. Neglected by his creator, the creature had no one to teach him, this caused him to become isolated. While wandering in the wilderness the creature came upon the De Lacey family. He does not approach them, instead he studies them and becomes accustom to their doings. He uses his isolation to educate himself and gain courage to meet the family. Aghast by the creature’s monstrous appearance, the De Lacey family fled away leaving the

Easily one of the most notable themes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the role of nature versus nurture in developing children, recurs throughout the novel with the two main characters, Frankenstein and his creature, believing in opposite sides of this theme. Favoring nature, Frankenstein maintains that the creature was always evil from the moment of creation, regardless of the creature’s experiences. However, the creature, in his narrative to Frankenstein, argues that “[he] was benevolent and good; misery made [him] a fiend” (106). In adherence with John Locke’s concept of tabula rasa, the creature was born with a blank slate, and only through his experiences does he gain knowledge and personality. Struggling to persevere in the human world, Frankenstein’s creature merely wants humans to welcome him as one of them. The change of the creature from looking “upon crime as a distant evil” because “benevolence and generosity were ever present” in him to seeking revenge on Frankenstein results from a culmination of horrible experiences (103). While it may be hard to see the creature as a trustworthy narrator because of how he has acted and his ulterior motives, he does present physical evidence to support his tale. Facing rejection in different forms, he becomes truly evil, giving up hope of companionship as a result of his trials and lessons. From the moment of his creation, the creature encounters abandonment, violence, isolation, and rejection everywhere he turns.

Even Frankenstein, the monster’s creator, is blind to the innocence of the being he animates. Upon reflection, he recounts, “breathless horror and disgust filled my heart… unable to endure the aspect of the being I created, I rushed out of the room” (35), yet this rationalization lacks material justification. Frankenstein, as the creator, is endowed with a responsibility for the being he escorts into the world, a basic social value accepted by all. Nevertheless, he alienates his monster from its first breath, claiming, “no mortal could support the horror of [its] countenance” (36). Shelley employs this ironic twist of social expectations in order to emphasize the ability of visual bias to distort the expression of morality. To abandon a child is perceived as immoral, but to abandon a monster, born into the world with neither hateful bias nor malicious intent is acceptable. He is innocent in every aspect of disposition, yet society greets

In the book Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, the subject of discrimination because of looks appears in many instances. When Frankenstein created the monster and finally realized how it looked he was very disappointed. After the monster was spotted by the villagers, they were terrified because of the way he looked. The creature began looking for food and shelter and encountered a older man, whom he frightened. Looks seem to be a major subject throughout this entire book.

“Frankenstein’s creation is a wretched, evil creature, which deserves nothing but death”. This is a statement, we people, might make if we base our opinion of this new creation only and purely on his actions. Can the creature’s actions condemn him to a life of solitude and immorality? If we look at the situation more closely and with an open mind, we might indeed find ourselves connecting and even sympathizing with this wretched beast. How could someone consent of such evil actions? Well, the reader does not have to; all the reader has to do is keep an open mind and a soft heart. In order to understand how and why the full presentation of the creation’s character might entice the reader to sympathize, one must first look more closely at the actions seen as “evil” and the reasoning behind them.

After being abandoned by Dr. Frankenstein, Creature wanted to be accepted by mankind. However, his grotesque appearance was enough for society to isolate him. The physical and psychological characteristics that a society finds difficult to acknowledge as “normal” is what monsters embody. Because people made snap judgements about who Creature was, Creature started thinking of himself as wicked and evil. The circumstances he was placed in incited fury within that turned into physical violence. Creature referred to Dr. Frankenstein as a “cursed creator”, and “For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled [his] bosom, and [he] did not strive to control them; but allowing [himself] to be borne away by the stream, [he] bent [his] mind towards injury and death” (Shelly 138 and 140). He became a powerful and threatening force. Creature fed the evil wolf and became more of a monster than just his physical semblance showed. By murdering innocent victims, he only fueled the monstrosity within him causing it to be his paramount

Victor Frankenstein’s treatment of the monster is the main reason of its hatred toward human kind due to the hate he is seeing from his creator. “you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us” (68), this is said by the creature to shame Frankenstein and reveal to him what had first taken away the pure innocence he felt before discovering of the abandonment by his creator. Even though the creature acted in the wrong way to express his feelings of loneliness and neglect, it had the ability to be purely good and due to the mistreatment of the humans he had crossed paths with, he could not see his true potential for being truly

Victor Frankenstein was not only a scientist, but also a creator, and father. He brought his creature to life, but then instead of putting its visual misfortune aside, he ran from it, out of fear. This is similar to Boo Radley in “To Kill A Mockingbird” in the sense that people immediately fear things that do not look like themselves. All of that aside Frankenstein should have helped his creation to understand the world before casting it out. With the circumstances given to him, the creature did the best he could.

Frankenstein’s monster is one of the most universally misrepresented characters in literature; in popular culture, the monster is known as an evil, soulless killer. However, in Frankenstein, he is revealed to have human emotions, the capability for compassion, and initially good intentions; his experiences in human society turned him into a true monster. When Frankenstein meets his monster, the monster reveals himself to be human in nearly every way. However, his alarming appearance makes it impossible to fit into society. Because his outward appearance is that of a repulsive monster, people treat him as such regardless of his actions or intentions. For instance, when the monster saved a young girl from drowning, the townspeople, who believe that he is trying to murder her, shoot him. As he tells Frankenstein, “I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound with shattered the flesh and bone.” Because of many experiences like this one, the monster eventually turns resentful and bitter towards humanity and kills Frankenstein’s younger brother out of rage at Frankenstein. In short, by refusing to accept the monster based on his appearances rather than his character, society molded the monster into a true monster with evil intentions and a lust for blood. Had even one person shown compassion to the monster and been able to see past his appearance, the monster might not have become the killer that he did—in mind and soul, the monster seemed very much human and had the potential to become a productive member of society.

In doing so, Frankenstein condemns the creature to loneliness and persecution. The creature's hatred and violent acts are not an inherent part of his character, as he explains, "I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous" (81). If Frankenstein had raised and cared for him, the creature would have experienced compassion, and had someone to support him and be his advocate. Instead, the creature is left to learn about the world on his own, and develop a set of morals based on the way society treats him. Because he grows up outside of, and shunned by, society, he feels very little moral obligation towards other human beings. "...and tell me why should I pity man more than he pities me?" the creature asks Frankenstein. "Shall I respect man when he contemns [sic] me?" (122) The creature is not a monster in his own eyes; he is behaving rationally given the treatment he has received. If he were taught a better way to act, he would almost certainly behave in that way. The monster is not born a monster, his ugliness notwithstanding; he becomes one because society behaves monstrously towards him.

Like most horror stories, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has a wretched monster who terrorizes and kills his victims with ease. However, the story is not as simple as it seems. One increasingly popular view of the true nature of the creature is one of understanding. This sympathetic view is often strengthened by looking at the upbringing of the creature in the harsh world in which he matures much as a child would. With no friends or even a true father, the creature can be said to be a product of society and its negative views and constant rejections of him. Although this popular view serves to lessen the severity of his crimes in most people’s eyes, the fact remains that the creature is in fact a cold-hearted wretch whose vindictive nature

Victor Frankenstein grew up in Geneva. He had a strong interest in reading the works of the ancient and outdated alchemists, and was fascinated by science and the 'secret of life.' One day he decided that he wanted to study further, so Victor actually created a person of his own out of old body parts and strange chemicals. When the creature came to life, he was a hideously ugly beast. The creature does have beauteous features such as ?lustrous black hair,? and ?teeth of pearly whiteness,? but they do not look good because they are out of place in relation to his other features, such as his ?shriveled complexion,? and ?watery

Throughout the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley, the creature is subjected to countless acts of violence and rejection. For a monster to develop, one must have been formerly exploited either by an individual or their society. The creature is not only a physical product of science, but his atrocious behavior is also an explicit result of Victor’s actions toward him. The creature was not born a monster, but slowly morphed into one as he experiences violence and rejection from his society.

Frankenstein’s and society’s rejection of the monster, however, drove him to an uneven passionate pursuit for a companion. He forced Frankenstein to create a female monster, and he provided motivation by killing Frankenstein’s loved ones and threatening to kill more of them. The monster recalls in this final scene of Shelley’s novel how his desire drove him to evil. “. . . do you think that I was then dead to agony and remorse?--He . . . suffered not more in the consummation of the deed;--oh! Not the ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the lingering detail of its execution. A frightful selfishness hurried me on. . . .” (153) At that point in the novel, the monster has changed from good in nature to evil in nature. His own desires are more important to him than the well-being of others and he is willing to commit murder in order ensure the fulfillment of his desire.