The Human Mind In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

The creature claims that the creation of a equal partner like himself would make him happy. The creature proclaims, "my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become linked to the chain of existance and events, from which I am now excluded" (121). In this speech, the creature tries to provoke sympathy from Doctor Frankenstein. However, because of his previous acts of violence, his request is denied. This agonizes the creature: "Shall each man...find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have a mate and I be alone?" (140). The result of these constant rejections that the creature becomes violent and therefore cannot be blamed for his violence. The creature's desire to be given affection and sympathy can only reside in another being like himself since he has been denied by the world around him.

Victor does not fuse up that he knew who killed the young boy and the judge convicts Victor’s friend Justine to death. After Justine death, Victor is consumed with the “weight of despair and remorse pressing on my heart” (Shelley pg. 80) the terror of allowing his friend die and the creature to roam free. The way the author (Shelley) painted Victor’s feeling using the words “despair” and “remorse” presents of conscience sorrowful man. The word “despair” gives the audience a negative tone of lost hope. Describing Victor’s pain of distress in the situation he was him in made the audience feel Victor’s pain.“Remorse” is a connotation of realizing his mistake and having regret for the decision he made that allowed Justine to be killed. Meanwhile, the creature explained to Victor after Justine’s death his emotion towards mankind. “All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!” (Shelley pg. 88). The words used to characterized the hatred the creature feels to mankind is severe. The creature depicted mankind as “wretched” people who will be “wretched” forever. The term “wretched” expresses the creature’s angry and mankind are despicable people. The creature justify his answer by explaining that his good actions like saving the young boy and got him shot at by the father. All

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.

Through recognition of his isolation, abandonment and rejection the creature is moulded to be a character deserving of sympathy and understanding. Nevertheless, through his later actions, particularly the murder of Elizabeth, Shelley challenges the reader’s preliminary perception of the character as a victim of an unjust society. Aided by the evocative emotive language surrounding Elizabeth’s death, in which her “lifeless and inanimate body” is described as “bloodless” and “thrown across the room”, the depiction of the creature’s act is illustrated as savage and violent. This results in the creature, being presented as inhuman, unforgivable, and ultimately a murderer. Consequently, the reader is influenced to feel an unwavering lack of sympathy towards the character, despite his struggle throughout the text. Reforming the perception of the character, Shelley challenges the reader to broaden their view of the creature and question whether he is worthy of

This as well gave him a feeling of relief and happiness after all the stress put over him due to his creation going wrong. Furthermore, after the discovery of his ugly appearance, the monster discovers the beauty of nature, and expresses, “Spring advanced rapidly; the weather became fine, and the skies cloudless. It surprised me, that what before was a desert and gloomy should now bloom with the most beautiful flowers and verdure” (Shelley 107). Similar to Victor in the first example, the monster is just coming off a troubling experience, this being discovering his ugly and scary appearance after seeing himself in a reflection of a puddle. But when he discovers nature, all of his problems go away and he is calmed by the beauty and the feel.

Shelley continues to show how the creature was a tender, caring being for quite a while. After Victor rejected the affection and friendship offered him by his creation, completely abandoning him, the creature left Victor and went out into the world. He soon discovered that the world would not be a friendly place. Persecution, alienation, and affliction would eventually drive the creature into doing terrible things. Sir Walter Scott, a famous Scottish novelist, said:

As the creature skims through a novel he discovers, he notices how upon Earth, mankind has always been blessed with the love of God. With that, he starts to question on why he hasn’t been endowed with this affection and why his creator abandoned him. Likewise, Mary Shelley displays allusion due to the indirect comparison to Paradise Lost. Using an allusion greatly impacts on how miserable the creature was to be left without any guidance whatsoever; however, this could’ve been prevented if someone were to show a little human kindness. Consequently, since the creature grew up lonely and hated, he no longer desired to be apart of their kind and becomes vengeful. A theme to describe this situation is that parents should always be responsible for

With the Creature remarking the words, “and I shall again be virtuous”, Shelley is able to support the nurture argument through showing that the monster was once virtuous but misery, lonesomeness, and abandonment made him evil. Prior to this scene, the Creature is characterized as being a vicious monster who terrorizes the human race, while Frankenstein is seemingly docile in nature. With the Creature remarking, “Be calm!” (Shelley 118), there is a power shift occurring between the two characters. For once, the Creature is able to tell his parental figure what to do. When the Creature remarks, “Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery?” (Shelley 118); this inquiry makes one question their prior beliefs about the Creature. Until this passage, he has been characterized as a ravaging villain. Frankenstein's creation has a passion for revenge as a way of coping with the isolation and mistreatment he experienced. One cannot judge his actions when he wasn’t given the proper guidance from his creator. The Creature, instead, has to rely on his environment to give him the tools to succeed in society. For instance, the Creature is able to learn how to read through hearing some of the most beautiful literature which allows him to discover powerful novels like Paradise Lost. This influences the

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, both Victor and his creation demonstrate positive and destructive aspects of human nature. This caused the book to have a more gothic and romantic tone because of these differences in positive and destructive sides of human nature. Victor shows many times his destructive and positive and negative sides, like when he created the creature and when he's at Justine's trial. The creature also shows many instances of positive and negative sides of human nature like when he kills William and when he helps the cottage family out. These displays of human nature show how similar the creature and Victor are.

He was “terrified when he viewed himself in a transparent pool” (Shelley 48). Despite his prejudice against himself, he overcomes this and continues to crave the attention not yet given to him. After he burns the cottage, the monster, who still has good in him despite the prejudices, saves a girl who is almost drowning. After saving the girl, he was shot. He “had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense (he) writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone” (Shelley 61).

“...Hateful day when I received life!' Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?.... Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred” (Shelley 119). The monster after discovering that his own creator is horrified by his existence, continues to lose hope about his position in the world. He is left alone with no one to care for him or show him love. “I was dependent on none and related to none….My person was hideous and my stature gigantic... These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them”(Shelley 117). The quote expands on the idea of how the monster has expanded his knowledge from listening and reading literature on his existence and his place int the world. “Sometimes I allowed my thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of Paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathizing with my feelings and cheering my gloom;...”(Shelley 118). This quote continues on the theme of how the monster is expanding knowledge and becoming much more intelligent and aware of his place on earth. It shows how his thoughts are directly focused and stemmed on a few pieces of literature. It shows that he may be narrow-minded and needs to broaden his horizons to other possibilities and pieces of

The creature feels abandoned by his creator, Victor, and proclaims to him: “Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel” (Shelley 87). Shelley refers to the creature as being abandoned by Victor just as God abandoned angel Lucifer after he committed terrible sin. The reference to Adam in the Bible is a reoccurring theme which reflects how Victor’s abandonment of the creature caused him to do harm. Victor brings his monster into the world as an innocent creature, or so the creature believes. However, society rejects the creature because of his appearance and he is corrupted to a life of misery, thus losing his innocence. Shelley uses this allusion to prove that as humans (or creatures of similar nature, in this case) experience the corruption that exists in the world, their innocence is lost.

The creature once says, “All men hate the wretched; how then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, they creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us” (Shelley 83). He wonders himself why, in all of his suffering, he has been created at all. He was not even granted the bride he was promised by Victor. This unfortunate existence led the creation to turn to anger and rage. Blind ambition drove his creator, who could not foresee the level of destruction he would give when the reality of his plans was finally realized.

In chapter 4, Victor explains the importance of success in reanimating life. For Victor, the reanimation insures that he will be known as a creator in comparison to god. (Shelley 32). In chapter fifteen, the creature states that his life is like Adam because there is “no link to any other being in existence” (Shelley 92). Apart from that, Shelley connects the creature to Satan in regards to the fact that “for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protector, the bitter gall of envy rose within me” (Shelley 93). This shows the conflict within the creature between good and evil.

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.