Essay on Role of Identity in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein

In consequence to the dilemma of Victor not being a good parental unit towards the monster, his creation had no parental guidance and led to him vengefully murdering Victor’s friends and family with malice. “How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind” (Shelley 89). This quote shows the creation bashing Frankenstein for not being there for the creations “childhood” and he also criticizes victor for creating him.

Fiction authors help describe the main character with the use of foil characters. Foil characters are used in works of literature to be the opposite of or different from the main character to help the reader create a better mental picture of the lead. Mary Shelley makes use of this technique in one of her most famous books, Frankenstein Or, The Modern Prometheus. There are many different examples of foil characters in her novel, the most effective foil is Victor’s creation. Victor Frankenstein fabricates an unnatural being and this creature is used as a foil throughout the book.

    In any novel the author is free to create and shape their characters in whatever way they see fit. In Frankenstein, Shelley does an excellent job of shaping her characters, be it however minute their part in the story, so that the reader gets a clear picture of Shelley's creations. It seems that each character in Shelley's Frankenstein is created by Shelley to give the reader a certain impression of the character. By doing this Shelley creates the characters the way she wants us to see them. She tells us certain things about them and gives them certain traits so that they will fit into the story the way she wants them to. In particular I will examine the characters of the

"A fiendish rage animated him as he said this; his face was wrinkled into contortions too horrible for human eyes to behold; but presently he calmed himself and proceeded—" This quote is used by Mary Shelly to set a mood of fear and monstrosity. My belief is that Victor was destined to become a miserable outcast. His traits and morals as a person point to the fact. Even as a child Victor never took responsibility for his actions and always shied away from confrontation. He only looked at his own best interest and didn’t take into account the consequences of his actions, Even when his favourite professor tried to show him how horrible it was what he was doing. As his experiments progressed he became dehumanized. Cutting up dead bodies and assembling a creature out of dead bodies that can overpower any human.

To truly understand Victor Frankenstein, one must look first not at what he does, but why he does it. Each and every individual is molded by their upbringing and surroundings, and rather unsurprisingly, Victor had an atypical childhood; however, it was neither hostile nor malevolent, just strange for the

In the book, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the author illustrates similarities between both Victor and the Monster he creates. She draws parallels between the two regarding their feelings on family, nature, on exacting revenge, and how they both become isolated from society. Both are able to demonstrate extreme intelligence. As the novel progresses, Victor and the Monster become more similar to each other. Their relationship turns to one in which each is consumed with getting revenge on the other at all costs.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a story that includes many deeper meanings other than just the original story presented. While it is a story of Victor creating this monster, it also has themes of different human struggles that we experience on a daily basis. It looks at the human ambition to discover education and the human need for love, but also looks at the downfalls of human failures. This story looks at Victor’s creation of Frankenstein as a pursuit of higher knowledge that no human had ever reached, which is basically what we are all doing everyday. However, with every great human success there has to be some failure. In Frankenstein, Victor creates this monster, which no one has ever done before, but the actions of his creation cause turmoil in his life causing him to resent the monster and eventually leading him to his own death. This story is a man who has a great ambition to find a truer meaning to life, but instead learns multiple life lessons from both his successes and his failures.

Identity is something that many people struggle with. Sometimes thoughts become a jumbled, mixed-up pot, that people are forced to pick out of because they are not secure or comfortable with who they are. They have to deal with the cards they are dealt because of circumstance and sometimes even survival. Not knowing who you are or what your purpose in life is can be difficult. However, not having someone to guide and support you while trying to figure out these missing pieces in your identity is even more heartbreaking. One can imagine this feeling through the eyes and mind of Frankenstein's monster. Throughout the story of Frankenstein the author, Mary Shelley, depicts the life of the lonely monster. Being created from the innocent curiosity of a young scientist, this actions turns many lives around. Not only does the monster live in sadness and discomfort, knowing no one loves him, but Victor, his creator is torn inside with the shocking discovery of his creation. Out of fear, Victor abandons his very own creation out of fear. However, this lack of knowledge doesn’t give him time to find out the true loving soul inside the ugly exterior of his creation. Throughout the novel, an audience is able to see how abandonment, intolerance, and inner daemons are connected through the use of characterization, conflict and point of view.

Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein has been deemed a classic gothic novel. Her monster has frightened many generations throughout the ages, and lingers as a warning of science gone too far. But why did her monster survive the ages? I believe that Mary Shelley's monster managed to hold our attention and chill us to the bone, because she weaved a tale that incorporated the genres of gothic, and romantic literature into a narrative of complete terror, and psychological torment that managed to surpass any other gothic literature of her time.

It is amazing how words on a page take a life of their own once they are written. An author 's story can take readers away on a magic carpet ride, to a magical castle that anything can happen in Britain, even through a wardrobe to a land far away and draft them in the battle of a lifetime. But what is even more fascinating is that unlike humans, the words on the page never changes. From this moment to 200 years from now, the words on this page will always be the same, it is only the reader and the world around them that changes. Take for example Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In 1818, Shelley had a nightmare that lead her to write her novel as a personification of the Victorian Culture’s fascination of science and death. In 1934, director James Whale adapted the material into “ The Bride of Frankenstein” film, and was an allegory for pre-WWII unity, then in 1997, someone interpreted the film as a homosexual allegory for the 1990’s. This paper will examine how Mary Shelley adapted her nightmare into an allegory for her Victorian era audience, how James Whale used her original text to turn “ The Bride of Frankenstein” into a message of unity for a pre-WWII audience, as well as how Garry Morris uses Whale’s film to create a pro same sex marriage message out of the text in 1997.

In 1818 a novel was written that tingled people’s minds and thrilled literary critics alike. Frankenstein was an instant success and sold more copies than any book had before. The immediate success of the book can be attributed to the spine-tingling horror of the plot, and the strong embedded ethical message. Although her name did not come originally attached to the text, Mary Shelley had written a masterpiece that would live on for centuries.

He was well-liked in college and was revered by all his classmates and teachers. But, Victor’s academic success isn’t enough for him so takes his studies further and starts becoming interested in decomposition and the dead. This interest and development of theories then turns into something more and eventually the creation of the monster. "So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein — more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation." The development of Victor’s career and what he wanted to accomplish in his lifetime is all romanticized in some way because he was really using his imagination. In the 1800’s it wasn’t common to be interested in the types of science and thinking Victor was interested in and to actually succeed and make those things happen was unthought of. When Victor was creating this being that he thought he would be curing death but, what were his intentions for that? Was it for the greater good? Or was it just for himself? He went into trying to cure death for the greater good but as he got more into he was doing it to make a name for himself he was becoming insane and skittish thought what this

To begin with, Victor Frankenstein was driven by his ego. He thought that he had found a solution to escape death. The only thing Victor really wanted was to bring a dead person to life as fast as possible and therefore be famous. As scientist he didn’t began good with his project, he began straight with making the body without any sort of testing. He also wasn’t ethical, without permission he took organs and pieces of body from

The problem central to Frankenstein is the belief of its central character that he can perform the ultimate usurpation, that of God. There is an extreme vanity and egotism acting as the motivating force for Victor's work, as opposed to a disinterested desire to further the interest of the human race in general. Victor's true desire is to gain divine knowledge of the world, with the inevitable consequence, therefore, of substituting himself for the divine

However, that ambition was what ultimately brought him misery because it led him to commit his biggest mistake – the creations of his “monster”. Some may say that this was a monstrous act because of all the horrible crimes his monster committed in the future. Nevertheless, what drove him to “create life” is understandable because after all Victor is a scientist who wanted to discover something new. There is no way he could have known that his creation would eventually do those horrible things. Nonetheless, his reaction and ultimate rejections of his creation is inexcusable and terribly wrong, as it is one of the reasons the creations turns out to way it does. However, it is also every human reaction as Frankenstein got scared of the unknown creature he created which he considered dangerous at first. Admittedly, he never tried to find out if his creation was truly evil until it was too late, but his initial reaction is still comprehensible due to the fact that Victor was in shock and panicked. Furthermore, he was not a brave person at that time, but rather a coward, which does not make him a monster just –in that case- a bad person. Most importantly, Frankenstein suffered from his mistakes more than anyone else because his creation killed everyone he loved. In the end, his whole family and Victor himself died because of his mistakes. Additionally, the death of his family led Victor to change and take responsible for his actions as he decided to find and kill his creation himself at the end of the novel. This shows that he is aware of his mistakes and feels remorse which is something a “real monster” would never be able to feel because it is a human emotion again