Symbolism In Frankenstein

Playing God usually ends up in catastrophic events, and can even lead to the loss of one’s life. In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s obsession with creating life ultimately leads to the death of many of his loved ones. In Frankenstein, Victor, Robert, and the creature all share some trait that shows how they try to play God.

Due to his mistakes in creating his character of God, Shelley personified Victor Frankenstein as a cold creator to provide a commentary on the harshness of Milton’s God.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has several literary devices- such as structure, imagery, and many intricate details. She perfectly places words and puts them in such a way that the passage has a dual tone. Shelley begins with establishing the monster’s nature as being peaceful, because he wanted to reason with Victor. Him wanting to reason shows the importance of his decision to meet with Victor and shows that even though he has been through a great deal, he is still respectable to others. The audience gets to see the creature’s humble nature and makes the audience feel sympathetic towards him. This creates a peaceful tone to the passage. The monster wants to be loved by “any being and if they showed benevolence to me, I would return them hundred an hundred fold” (Shelley 148). The creature’s begging makes it sound like Victor will answer his plea. Using a broad term like “being”, demonstrates the monster’s need to be loved, putting him in a position with the audience again feeling empathetic towards him. Eventually, Victor’s compassion begins to fluctuate. The desperation the creature has looks like the desperation a human might have. This only gives the readers another reason to relate to him which leads to the other tone, impossible. Victor’s unreasonableness heightens this shared discontent as not only has the build up of the creature’s wistful nature made him an utmost identifiable character, but our views are adjusted in such as way that Frankenstein is seen

The novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus cannot be categorized into only one genre because it has various features of different genres. It is certainly a tragedy. Although the core narration starts with a story of how Frankenstein’s father meets and marries the protagonist’s mother, she first has to endure the death of her father called Beaufort. Thus, the novel already begins as a tragic exposition. As a result, the narrative fiction ends with almost everyone including the protagonist and the antagonist as dead.

Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein in 1816 when she was just 20 years old. Even at a young age, she was able to craft what is considered the first science fiction novel. At this time of her writing, a scientific revolution was occurring and with it came advances in topics like radiation and atomic theory. With this rapid change in science and human understanding, Shelly chose to write a story as plea against unorthodox scientific experiments. She portrays this idea with the use of the characters Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created. Through her use of these characters, as well as her use of allusions from religious texts and other literary works, she is able further her argument against untraditional science.

Mary Shelley utilizes figurative language in this excerpt to describe the surroundings of Frankenstein on his journey home and set the tone of gloomy, because of his brother’s death. Shelley uses personification to express the pattern of the raindrops as “violence quickly increasing” as if the raindrops were a person becoming very violent. This figurative language device develops the tone by tying into the violent actions of whoever murdered William, Frankenstein’s brother. Shelley uses the figurative language device of simile to compare the weather of nature such as, “vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire”. Shelley begins the sentence with a cheerful tone then takes a

The combination of his own motivation and the encouragement of his professor Waldman, Frankenstein possesses a “supernatural enthusiasm” for the study of galvanism and has no check on reality except for the disapproval of his father (Shelley 56). Frankenstein thinks that he can ‘play God’ in his studies at Ingolstadt and is a “disciple” of the ‘religion’ of galvanism that Waldman preaches (Shelley 54). Frankenstein believes that his exploration in the “hiding-places” of nature was a heavenly and glorified thing, however it turns out to be “thing such as Dante could not have conceived,” and is more related to hell than the pursuits of God (Shelley 58, 61). Frankenstein uses his power to mock God, and insinuates his power of making ‘life’ equal to God’s power of creating human birth. This mockery of God causes his own ruination, and thus loses his family and friends to the one thing he throws his whole life away on, the Creation.

Throughout the novel, the creation begins to slowly murder the people closest to Victor until he is left in solitude as he is forced to bear the burden of this knowledge of the murderer in addition to his own accountability of the deaths since he is responsible for the creation.

Frankenstein is to be “sometimes considered one of the first science fiction novels” (Fox,stacy ”Romantic and Gothic Representation in Frankenstein”). Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley. In this novel the main characters where Victor Frankenstein, his creation the monster, Robert Walton, Elizabeth Lavenza, Alphonse Frankenstein, and Henry Clerval. Frankenstein starts out with a normal boy named Victor Frankenstein who discovers an early interest in science. Victor later goes off to college to study science and ends up creating a monster. Throughout the novel the monster is stereotyped by his looks and is traumatized and goes for revenge against his creator when Victor refuses to make him a

In the Bible, the book of Genesis 1:27 states that "God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." Creating both men and women in His image, God is the only person who can do this successfully, giving us unconditional love and never abandoning us throughout our journey in life. On the other hand, Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist creates a life form due to his love of natural sciences. His desire to create this life form only for an experimental purpose unknowingly leads to disastrous outcomes for both Victor Frankenstein and his creation, the monster. In Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein uses his knowledge

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, references many other works of literature in her renowned book. To name a few of the referenced works there were John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the Greek “Prometheus myth”, and the widely known poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Each of these allusions gave a new meaning to Shelley’s story, affecting how each of the readers interpreted her words.

Frankenstein is structure like a story within a story. The story begins with discovery of a strange and the stranger telling us about the main character. Mary Shelley introduces us to Walton first, using it as a frame device, in which the tale is told to us but someone who reads it or hears it from someone else. Shelley also uses literary devices where she allows the letters to tell the story. She uses letter between Walton, Victor sister, mother and father.

Every time a movie is made that portrays any part of the book "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, it is more than likely about the monster and his character rather than the creator and his. But, in the book, the scientist, Dr. Frankenstein, was more prominent, especially in view of his personal angst and wars, than the monster. It is true that the monster is a central character, but the man Frankenstein is a much more interesting study. What happens to a person, Shelley seems to ask, when that individual plays God? Throughout the book there is religious symbolism, as one would expect from a book in which the main character creates a living person, where Frankenstein at once has compared himself to God and to Satan in the same breath. This paper examines the religious symbolism in "Frankenstein" as it relates to the doctor, his act of creating, and Frankenstein's personal thoughts regarding who he is.

A romantic life full of pain and abandonment could only be given the monstrous form of "Frankenstein." Mary Shelley 's life gave birth to an imaginary victim full of misery and loneliness and placed him as the protagonist of one of her most famous and greatest works of art. As most people would assume, he is not just a fictional character, but in fact a creature who desperately demonstrates Shelley 's tragedies and losses during the age of the Romantic Era. Since Mary Shelley 's birth there have been numerous losses in her life. One extremely dominating event in Shelley 's life was the death of her mother. Soon after, her father remarried and Shelley entered a battle as the victim of a fight for love. In her

Victor’s creation was another character in this story that experienced alienation and isolation. The monster was subjected to alienation his entire life. Unlike his creator, the monster did not choose this life of segregation, he was born into it. It seemed as if from the very first moment that Victor had laid eyes upon his creation he was viewed as being an abomination, and condemned to a life of rejection. The first experience that the monster had in life was upon opening his eyes and seeing the look of terror in his creator’s eyes. After Victor had abandoned his creation the creature is left with only questions and no one to answer them.