The Creature As Depicted In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein, symbolized a person’s necessity for acceptance by society. Society labels everything as good or bad, right or wrong, rich or poor. Although some of these labels may be correct, many are misconceptions. The monster, needed to be accepted by society, but instead was scorned, attacked, and shunned because of his outward appearance. The treatment of the monster was on the assumption that he was actually a monster. The only justification of this treatment was his outward appearance.

  One of the main themes in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the importance of appearance and acceptance in modern society. In today's society, and also in the society of Frankenstein, people judge one often solely on their looks. Social prejudice is often based on looks, whether it be the color of someone's skin, the clothes that a person wears, the facial features that one has and even the way one stands. People make snap judgments based on these and other considerations and they affect the way that they present themselves to one, and also the way that the treat the judged person. In Frankenstein the society of that time is much like our own today. It is an appearance

<br>One of the main themes in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the importance of appearance and acceptance in modern society. In today's society, and also in the society of Frankenstein, people judge one often solely on their looks. Social prejudice is often based on looks, whether it be the color of someone's skin, the clothes that a person wears, the facial features that one has and even the way one stands. People make snap judgments based on these and other considerations and they affect the way that they present themselves to one, and also the way that the treat the judged person. In Frankenstein the

People are sometimes misunderstood because of the norms of society. In the book Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelly, the main protagonist is Dr. Frankenstein, who bestows life into his monster and this monster begins to learn and understand his world better, throughout the story, the reader learns about Frankenstein and his family. But, the monster is rejected by everyone. He comes to Frankenstein to pleads him to build him a wife. He reluctantly agrees, but eventually leaves the project. Because of this, the monster swears to get his revenge on him because of how miserable and depressing he made his life. So, he goes and beings to slowly kill everyone Frankenstein cares about. The whole book was caused because of society. This idea of society is explicit in the novel, when the monster goes out into the world and understands he is extremely ugly. This causes people to be scared and flee or attack him on different occasions. This here conveys the idea that society molds people. During the novel of Frankenstein, Mary Shelly is trying to portray the messages of society makes people into who they truly are, that appearances cause people to view others differently and that people have a hidden demon lurking inside of them.

In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley depicts the monstrosities of physical beauty. Shelley’s characters display conceited attributes that value outer beauty over inner beauty. This is best represented by Frankenstein’s monster. Initially, the monster is a curious being who is compassionate and naïve towards society. His value for physical beauty is so strong that he idolizes the family in which he is observing, therefore dehumanizing them. Evidently, he is unable to contemplate why “such lovely creatures [are] miserable” (Shelley 127). His association of beauty with happiness causes the inevitable eradication of his own self esteem. Furthermore, the monstrosity comes into place when the monster uses his lack of confidence to justify his

Shelley’s depiction of the Creature as innately human motivates support for his challenges at the hands of a prejudiced society. The action of the

[Shelley 1831, 119]), then confronted with a rage ("revenge and hatred filled my bosom") that he struggles to contain by evoking an internalized responsive presence: ‘When I thought of my friends, of the mild voice of De Lacey, the gentle eyes of Agatha, and the exquisite beauty of the Arabian, these thoughts vanished, and a gush of tears somewhat soothed me’ (119). Given his invisibility, of course,

After reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and watching Branagh's 1994 movie version of the novel, the creature in Frankenstein is truly not a monster. Both the film and the movie shows the creature as an evil creation. If you look deeper into the situation it is shown that the creature is really not the monster. If anything the creator Frankenstein his the monster for not taking responsibility for his creation. Its like he created a baby and abandoned it. The creature shows compassion, immoral behavior, and tries to humanize himself with society. He born good but became evil. Although his creator Frankenstein believed and call him evil, he was not, he was made that way.

In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein creates a monster whose appearance brings ineffable terror and destruction into his life. However, the monster’s appearance and actions are not an accurate representation of the monster and are influenced by many outward factors that ultimately trace back to his creator. The monster’s grotesque outward appearance acts as a mirror as it reflects the true inward qualities of Victor as well as shows the flaws and abnormalities of the relationship between Victor, society, and the monster.

Society adjudges those with abnormal appearances as immoral. Similarly, someone saves a girl and is shot due to an unfit understanding of his appearance (Shelley 140). In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Dr. Victor Frankenstein struggles to parent an inhuman individual. Firstly, Victor experiments with parenting an inhuman individual in isolation, then this creature suffers alone due to his appearance’s amiss apprehensions. In other words, Shelley uses “parenting” experiences to amplify the ideas of isolation as an incommodity and how appearance provides a perverse perception of personality.

Though Mary Shelley loved children and being around them, she could not help but illustrate the horrors surrounding pre-natal rejection. To Mary Shelley childbirth is wondrous and one of the greatest tragedies that can result from this miracle of creation, is for the parent to, “beheld the wretch -- the miserable monster whom [they] had created” (Shelley Chapter 5). Shelley endeavored to create a horror of natural occurrences when writing this novel. Mary’s first child was lost due to a premature birth. She dreamed that one day her baby would be reborn. She hoped that her lost child would get a second chance at life. However, Shelley feared that in recreating life she was overstepping her bounds as a human. She believed that in consequence she might, ‘in process of time, renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption,” leaving her with a being for whom she would hold no care (Britton 4). Victors characterization stems from this innate fear that Shelley had. A man, who could not accept the passing of his mother attempts to reanimate a soul gone form this world, and is rewarded with a creature so hideous he tries to take its life. The society Shelley was raised in shunned the idea of a mother not accepting her child, and so a character who does just that, was a powerful demonstration of natural

A reader's subconscious often disables their ability to notice moral foundations that the author develops through the text; thus, making it difficult for an individual to recognize the value the text holds and its importance. In the article “Why Study Literature?” the author explains that “literature teaches us better courses of action and more effective responses to situations”; essentially he or she says that literature has the ability to shape one’s morals; as it can teach us what do in certain situations and how we should act. Similarly, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the author builds morality in readers by stressing the wrongs of using one’s visual appearance to determine their inner nature. At birth the monster is abandoned for his hideousness, the monster is “endowed with perceptions and passions” (Shelley, Chapter 16) after which he is “cast[ed] as an object for the scorn and horror of mankind” (Shelley, Chapter 16). For example, the monster chases for love when he assists the poor De Lacey family in collecting their lumber, however he is driven out by their horror upon seeing the face of their secret patron for the first time. Looking at this from an aesthetic stance, Shelley appears to be examining our natural tendency to judge a book by its cover. The author manifests the importance of inner beauty rather than one’s outer beauty, for it speaks more sincerely of their qualities as an individual. Had the protagonist realized the creature’s nobility from the

Beauty and prejudice have become commonplace in today’s society; the tiring cycle of living up to impossible beauty standards and facing the constant criticism of one’s image seems never-ending. However, this incessant obsessiveness over image has been around for thousands of years. In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, a prominent struggle between beauty and hideousness occurs throughout the book. Shelley uses the motif of undesirable appearances and the constant praise of beauty throughout Frankenstein to establish the theme of prejudice.

Mary Shelley creates an allegory between the community’s reaction to the monster and human nature. The monster physically appeared different from humans; therefore he was rejected by society to the point where he was the target for objects being thrown at him and scared the villagers to the point where they fainted. The monster acknowledges his difference when he said “its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes” (104). The community’s reaction is an allegory to human nature to reject the one’s who are different. Ordinary people are raised to accept those who are like them and avoid the outcasts, therefore the monster is unable to find acceptance among the community.

In a world full of different cultures and people, those who are different from the projected model of society are the ones who are rejected. Those who are different from what is perceived as normal, are isolated from cultures and societies. Those who refer to themselves as normal, reject anything that does not match the accustomed image that society has painted. Throughout history societies have revealed their corrupted moral values when dispelling different people from the bland model of their society. In the novel , Frankenstein, author Mary Shelley uses different alienated characters to show how society pushes away those who do not fit into society’s model of beauty of perfection and the negative outcomes that occur as a result.