Tabula Rasa Character Analysis

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When babies are born, the first thing they comprehend is the ability to breathe; they do not understand their name, how to communicate, or right from wrong, they are a blank slate which they then learn new information everyday through their guidance and experiences, this concept is called Tabula Rasa. Tabula Rasa was developed by the philosopher John Locke, he wrote the book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding which outlined his viewpoints on how the human mind operates. From Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein, we see that people begin as blank slates and develop themselves through experiences, because they don’t have an opinion about things to give them emotion, they haven’t experienced anything good or bad, and they have no upbringing …show more content…

In Mary Shelly’s book, Frankenstein when the creature was first created, Victor spoke that, “His jaws opened, he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled on his cheeks”(Shelly 48). When the creature was created, he had no hatred to anyone, when he came to see his creator he tried to communicate with him and grinned as a sign of compassion but when Victor shuns him away he then begins to feel his animosity towards the human race. As he began to be rejected more and more he began to turn into an uneducated angry being, the argument could have been made that if Victor would have sat down and educated his creature and showed compassion that the creature may have turned out just a nice and slightly abnormal being. John Locke formed the idea of Tabula Rasa, which is the idea that at birth the mind is a blank slate, “Locke argued that people acquire knowledge from the information about the objects in the world that our senses bring. People begin with simple ideas and then combine them into more complex ones”(age-of-the-sage 1). The blank slate theory makes great sense, people often make the counter-argument that kids are always like their parents but that simply …show more content…

Humans are experience based creatures, we learn from our mistakes, kids are not born with their knowledge. Blank slate, means that people can be whatever they want to be, they have no

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