In The Road and in Frankenstein, responsibility is a key characteristic that is either highly valued and used or quickly squandered and ignored. The way that each book and it’s respective characters use responsibility differs greatly and can only be paralleled through how differently they each decide to use it. The task of responsibility and seeing the use and misuse of it is very obvious as both the man and the boy and Victor Frankenstein with his creature wrestle to either use or run from their responsibilities.
In The Road, the boy and the man have to be responsible for each other and themselves. In a dull gray and destroyed world, if they don’t watch out for each other they’ll die. The importance of responsibility rests heavily on the shoulders
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Victor Frankenstein creates a monster out of pieces of dead people and then as soon as the creature opens his eyes, Victor abandons him. He didn’t understand the implications of responsibility as he worked on bringing his creature to life. Whether he desired the god-like power of giving life or was so enamored with his own work is unknown, but it seems that the last thing he was thinking of was taking responsibility for his actions. The idea of responsibility and the lack of responsibility on Victor Frankenstein’s part was what eventually brought his …show more content…
Frankenstein wasn’t an evil mad man, but a selfish, irresponsible one. He cared solely about himself to the point where he allowed his creation to murder his family and his friends and his fiancé. By the time Victor decided to be responsible, it was too late. Responsibility isn’t easy, and maybe it wouldn’t have caused different outcomes for Victor and maybe it was luck that kept the man and the boy alive. But in the end, when the man died, his son was able to go on. When Victor passed on, his creation goes off into the frozen wasteland to end his life. The responsibility of one person doesn’t just solely affect them, but also has an impact, either positive or negative, on those around them. Responsibility in The Road led to survival and to life while the lack of it in Frankenstein led to death, destruction, and a hard lesson
For example, when meeting with Justine and seeing her in despair, Victor could not help but feel responsible for her emotions and her execution. “But I, the true murderer, felt the never-dying worm alive in my bosom, which allowed of no hope or consolation.” (Ch.8) In the same manner, after her execution for the murder of William, Frankenstein felt accountable for both of their departures. “I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.” (Ch. 8) For instance, Henry’s demise gave way to Victor’s illness and him feeling guilty. “I called myself the murderer of William, Justine, and of Clerval… Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest?” (Ch. 21) Victor realized after the partings of William, Justine, Clerval, Elizabeth, and his father the cause of them all was not him but his creation. “I began to reflect on their cause--the monster whom I had created, the miserable dæmon.” (Ch. 23) In addition, Victor resented the creature and wished for it’s demise. “I was possessed by a maddening rage when I thought of him, and desired and ardently prayed that I might have have him within my grasp to wreak a great and signal revenge on his cursed head.” (Ch. 23) In brief, many
In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley highlights on the experiences her characters undergo through the internal war of passion and responsibility. Victor Frankenstein lets his eagerness of knowledge and creating life get so out of hand that he fails to realize what the outcome of such a creature would affect humankind. Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, highlights on how Frankenstein’s passion of knowledge is what ultimately causes the decline of his health and the death of him and his loved ones.
Taking responsibility for one's actions is a hallmark of maturity, leadership, and capability. When one can admit their faults or wrongdoings when they happen, life usually moves along much smoother. Consequences for those who attempt to shift blame off themselves for their own misdeeds tend to be much more severe than those who acknowledge them as their own. In literature, agency is the ability of a character to act on their environment, those who act positively and take responsibility for their actions would be said to have good agency. The absence of this quality can result in large consequences for not only the person lacking in agency, but those around them as well. Victor Frankenstein and Rodion Raskolnikov’s delusions of grandeur, unwillingness
Frankenstein defied human boundaries when he created the monster and because of this not only his life, but the lives of others have also shifted, this has caused their lives to spiral into an unjustified conclusion. Curiosity was the main cause of him learning how to create such a thing, his lack of caring for the thing that he created led to his undoing. His motivation for creating life, comes from the fact that he lost someone dear to him. Although Victor was young when his mother died, it had serious effects on the way he viewed life and maybe even himself. Once you take on the father role you have to stick to it, otherwise creating life
Social and Individual Responsibility in Frankenstein Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein in a time of wonder. The main wonder was whether you could put life back into the dead. Close to the topic of bringing life back into the dead was whether you could create your own being, like selective breeding, but a bit more powerful. Close to where Mary lived, there was a man named Vultair who was experimenting with putting electricity through frogs to see if they could come back to life. With that going on close to her, as well as the fear of a revolution and the pressure on her to think of a ghost story, it is not surprising she thought of a horror story that would still be popular in the 21st Century.
He toils endlessly in alchemy, spending years alone, tinkering. However, once the Creature is brought to life, Frankenstein is no longer proud of his creation. In fact, he’s appalled by what he’s made and as a result, Frankenstein lives in a perpetual state of unease as the Creature kills those that he loves and terrorizes him. Victor has realized the consequences of playing god. There is irony in Frankenstein’s development, as realized in Victor’s desire to destroy his creation. Frankenstein had spent so much effort to be above human, but his efforts caused him immediate regret and a lifetime of suffering. Victor, if he had known the consequences of what he’s done, would have likely not been driven by his desire to become better than
In Frankenstein, Victor’s monster suffers much loneliness and pain at the hands of every human he meets, as he tries to be human like them. First, he is abandoned by his creator, the one person that should have accepted, helped, and guided him through the confusing world he found himself in. Next, he is shunned wherever he goes, often attacked and injured. Still, throughout these trials, the creature remains hopeful that he can eventually be accepted, and entertains virtuous and moral thoughts. However, when the creature takes another crushing blow, as a family he had thought to be very noble and honorable abandons him as well, his hopes are dashed. The monster then takes revenge on Victor, killing many of his loved ones, and on the humans who have hurt him. While exacting his revenge, the monster often feels guilty for his actions and tries to be better, but is then angered and provoked into committing more wrongdoings, feeling self-pity all the while. Finally, after Victor’s death, the monster returns to mourn the death of his creator, a death he directly caused, and speaks about his misery and shame. During his soliloquy, the monster shows that he has become a human being because he suffers from an inner conflict, in his case, between guilt and a need for sympathy and pity, as all humans do.
He created a life, and then spontaneously he quickly decided to run away from his creation. Victor’s actions after creating what he created were really irresponsible, and did not correctly took care of the circumstance’s he put himself in. The creation was never actually evil, but he felt abandoned by what could had been called his father. Frankenstein, the monster, was only a seeker for companionship. He strongly desired to feel loved, rather than abandoned. Society’s evil behavior toward the monster is what altered the monster’s conduct and followed to how he acted.
..., played God, abandoned his creation, and then hid any relation to the creature. Victor is quite at fault for the murders that take place in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. True, the monster does know right from wrong, the difference is he was not brought up by his parents that way. How to live life is something that is learned and imprinted through experience and guidance. The monster was never fully given the chance to live because upon the day he arrived he was instantly rejected. Victor created the monster physically and emotionally within himself and in turn died by it.
As a romantic novel Victor is responsible, because he abandoned his creation. As an archetype novel, Victor is the villain, because he was trying to play god. Finally, Victor as a Gothic novel, Victor is at fault, because, he and the creature are two different parts of the same person. If Frankenstein is looked at as a romantic novel, Victor, not the creature, is truly the villain. When Victor created the creature, he didn't take responsibility for it. He abandoned it, and left it to fend for itself. It is unfair to bring something into the world, and then not teach it how to survive. The creature was miserable, and just wanted a friend or someone to talk to. On page 115, the creature said, "Hateful day when I received life! Accursed the creator. Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust." This line shows the agony the monster was in, because of how he looked when he was created which led to even Victor running away from him. If Victor didn't run, he could have taught the monster and made his life happy. After the creature scared the cottagers away he said, "I continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of utter ...
In Shelley?s Frankenstein, Victor brings a monster to life, only to abandon it out of fear and horror. ? gThe beauty of the dream had vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart? (Shelley, 35). The reader must question the ethics of Victor. After all, he did bring this creature upon himself.
Taking responsibility is “the state or fact of being responsible, answerable, or accountable for something within one's power, control, or management” (dictionary.com). When you decide to take the responsibility of something or someone then do it to your greatest ability and do not leave any stones unturned. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley determines the role of responsibility for the welfare, acts, the deaths and the lives of others. Taking responsibility means being accountable for your actions, accepting the mistakes and taking the ownership of the mistakes that come along with one’s actions. Taking responsibility does not mean that all the actions will go as planned but accepting the consequences even if they do not go
Although some critics say that the monster Victor has created is to blame for the destruction and violence that follow the experiment, it is Victor who is the responsible party. First, Victor, being the scientist, should have known how to do research on the subject a lot more than he had done. He obviously has not thought of the consequences that may result from it such as the monster going crazy, how the monster reacts to people and things, and especially the time it will take him to turn the monster into the perfect normal human being. This is obviously something that would take a really long time and a lot of patience which Victor lacks. All Victor really wants is to be the first to bring life to a dead person and therefore be famous. The greed got to his head and that is all he could think about, while isolating himself from his friends and family. In the play of Frankenstein, when Victor comes home and sets up his lab in the house, he is very paranoid about people coming in there and finding out what he is doing. At the end of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor says:
After Frankenstein discovered the source of human life, he became wholly absorbed in his experimental creation of a human being. Victor's unlimited ambition, his desire to succeed in his efforts to create life, led him to find devastation and misery. "...now that I have finished, the beauty of the dream had vanished..." (Shelley 51). Victor's ambition blinded him to see the real dangers of his project. This is because ambition is like a madness, which blinds one self to see the dangers of his actions. The monster after realizing what a horror he was demanded that victor create him a partner. "I now also began to collect the materials necessary for my new creation, and this was like torture..." (Shelley 169). Victor's raw ambition, his search for glory, has left him. His eyes have been opened to see his horrible actions, and what have and could become of his creations. As a result, Victor has realized that he is creating a monster, which could lead to the downfall of mankind. His choice is simple, save his own life or save man.
Victor Frankenstein was the creator of the monster in the book. He was an ambitious man who had high hopes and dreams for himself, but this characteristic was the cause of his downfall. He had a ruthless desire to obtain forbidden knowledge- a knowledge that only God was worthy of having. This lead him to lock himself in his laboratory, disregarding his family, friends, and health. His one purpose was to create life. In his quest to create a human being and bestow the power of life, Victor eventually did create a creature, but this lead to a situation