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Literary analysis for frankenstein
Frankenstein mary shelley character analysis
Frankenstein mary shelley character analysis
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Mary Shelley, Frankenstein has a character who mirrors the general idea of these three main conflicts: Lack of Responsibility towards the whole community or society, Self absorbed personality who only sees the faults in others and repulsive behavior with the ability to cursive other people.
Victor Frankenstein self-absorbed personality is one of the major measures of evilness and the book carries many examples of his self-centered ways. First example of self-centered behavior Victor portrays exists when he shoves his family and friends gone from his life in pursuit of knowledge. “The same feelings which made me neglect the surrendering scenes caused me also to forget those who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time”. Second example of self-absorbed Victor portrays occurred when he had denied the monster's dream to have a companion. The monster asserts that if Victor produces a female monster for him won’t cause anymore difficulty “the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes”. Victor’s self-absorbed personality showed that he would go at lengths to
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First example of his lack of responsibility exists when he abandons his monster just after creating it. “How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form?. Another supporting element, Victor register knowledge that the crimes the monster commits are a direct result of his abandonment he refuses of acknowledge. “My dearest friend, you must calm yourself. These events have affected me, God knows how deeply; but I am not so wretched as you are. There is an expression of despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance that makes me tremble. Victor’s absence of being in control of his life, has made him the least credibility when taking ownership for something he had
With nobody to reason with, Victor makes senseless decisions while he is alone. Victor begins this with his process of creating the monster. Nobody in the right mind would ever dig up graves, but that is just what victor goes and does. Once this creation is finally given life, which Victor has spent two years striving for, Victor foolishly abandons it. Victor comes to his senses to some degree after he brings life to the monster as he states, “‘now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream had vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 43). Had there been companions around Victor during this creation time, perhaps someone would have been able to guide Victor away from creating the “wretch” (Shelley 43) he so hopelessly conceived. As for the monster, he makes fairly good decisions even without guidance from anyone, including Victor, his creator. The monster has the desire to learn and gain knowledge as a genuine individual. As the monster is continuously rejected and shunned by mankind, his natural benevolence turns to malevolence. In his loneliness, the monster wrongly decides to declare “‘everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery’” (Shelley 126). Say the monster was able to have comrades of some kind around him, he would not have turned to this
Victor experiences very little joy at all after the creation of the monster. He suffers from numerous bouts of depression, he most tolerate the deaths of his brother, best friend, and wife, all of which were murdered at the hands of the monster. His friend Justine is executed because of the death of William, for which she is falsely accused and convicted. His father also dies after the murder of Elizabeth, Victor's ill-fated bride. With so much death surrounding his life, how is it possible that Victor could still be cognizant of his actions when he decides to pursue the monster and end its violent fury? He can't. Victor's mind is so clouded by the sorrow and pain of his past that he is blinded to the fact that he is attempting to destroy a creature with far greater physical strength and speed than any mortal. Much of his conflict appears to be created by the monster, when in fact the torment comes from Victor's own hands because he himself created and gave life to the monster.
Despite the rash actions that Victor takes, he ultimately does assume complete responsibility for the creature that he brought into being. After the monster murders William, Justine is then tried for the murder. Victor accepts that it was his fault even though he was not the one that actually murdered him: "But I, the true murderer, felt the never-dying worm alive in my bosom, which allowed of no hope or consolation" (74). Victor felt as if he had actually murdered both children because he had created the murderer. Even though in the end Justine took the official blame, Victor seized the responsibility so he took steps towards catching the monster and stopping him from killing anyone else. If he was not concerned with it being his fault one way or another he would not have continued to try to put the monster to rest. Later on, while Victor is creating a companion for the monster, he realizes the implications of a second creation: "Had I right, for my own benefit, t...
The confrontation between the two demonstrates Victor 's weaknesses as an individual. Although Victor is the Creature 's creator, he refers to his creation as an "abhorred monster" (Shelley 68) and is willing to "extinguish the spark which he so negligently bestowed" (Shelley 68) upon him. This demonstrates Victor 's lack of responsibility. His goal was to create life, essentially to play God. Once the monster began to murder those dearest to Victor, he failed to take responsibility for the creature 's actions. Another weakness in Victor 's character is revealed through the dialogue exchanged between creator and creation. Instead of calmly trying to reason with the Creature, Victor lashes back at the Creature. He even suggests that the two "try their strength in a fight in which one must fall." (Shelley 69) The monster, however, maturely and eloquently urges Victor 's "compassion to be moved" (Shelley69). Because Victor is full of "rage and horror" he wants to destroy his own creation even though victor is playing god in recreation of humanity. They both are to blame due to the fact that Victor created the creature as well as the signs of irresponsibility between the two for the Creature killing people and for Victor trying to recreate
The most prevalent theme in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is that of obsession. Throughout the novel there are constant reminders of the struggles that Victor Frankenstein and his monster have endured. Many of their problems are brought upon by themselves by an obsessive drive for knowledge, secrecy, fear, and ultimately revenge.
The monster is left to live his life with no help from his creator after being abandoned. While having the mind of a newborn, this is not easy for him. By not knowing right from wrong, he murdered Victor's loved ones in order to get attention. He never had anyone to teach him how to live life with dignity and respect. This is a major loss for a living being. The creator is at fault here because the monster does not know better. Victor should have taken responsibility by accepting, raising, and controlling the monster.
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.
Victor’s lack of compassion and sympathy towards the monster causes him to become angry instead of guilty. His cruelness to his creation made the monster kill and hurt the people he did but “when [he] reflected on [the monster’s] crimes and malice, [Victor’s] hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation,”(Shelley 325). Without compassion Victor thinks that the only way to stop the monster is to get revenge on him, instead of just giving him the empathy and kindness that monster craved. Victor realizes that "if he were vanquished, [he] should be a free man...balanced by those horrors of remorse and guilt which would pursue [him] until death. ”(Shelley 731).
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 ...
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley introduces the change from good to evil with the attention that guardians give a child. William Crisman, in his critique of Mary Shelley’s work, identifies the “sibling rivalry” between Victor and the rest of his family. Crisman remarks that Victor feels as if he is the most important person in his parents’ lives, since he was Alphonse’s and Caroline’s only child. The Frankensteins adopt Elizabeth and Victor sarcastically remarks that he has a happy childhood. This prompts Victor starts to read essays about alchemy and study natural science. Anne Mellor, another critic of Frankenstein, proposes that Frankenstein’s creature was born a good person and society’s reaction to him caused him to turn evil. Victor’s makes the creature in his own perception of beauty, and his perception of beauty was made during a time in his life when he had secluded himself from his family and friends. He perceived the monster as “Beautiful!”, but Victor unknowingly expressed the evil in himself, caused by secluding himself from everybody, onto the creature (60). In this way, the creature is Victor’s evil mirrored onto a body. The expression of Victor onto the monster makes the townspeople repulsed by the creature. The theory of the “alter ego” coincides with Crisman’s idea of sibling rivalry (Mellor). Mary Shelley conveys that through Crisman’s idea of sibling rivalry, Victor isolates himself from society. Mellor describes the isolation during his creation of his creature leads to him giving the creature false beauty that causes Victor to abandon him and society to reject him.
It is when Frankenstein realizes how different he is to other people that he realizes his uniqueness and individualism. “I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they and could subsist upon a coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?” (Frankenstein, 150). While Frankenstein is by no means a human, he is made up of human parts and still craves love and affection. His rejection from everyone he sees, including his creator makes him feel like an outcast. It was because of Victor that Frankenstein couldn’t bear to be who he was made to be and felt a need to run into isolation. Victor not only created a monster physically, but also mentally turned him into someone he didn’t have to be. Both Frankenstein and Victor struggle with balancing their personal wants and needs with societies expectations and the people around them. That is one of the true struggles of being one person living in a world of many, you have to do what makes you happy while making sure it doesn’t effect other peoples happiness negatively. Victor doesn’t do a good job of
Mary Shelley, the renowned author of Frankenstein, explores the consequences of man and monster chasing ambition blindly. Victor Frankenstein discovered the secret that allowed him to create life. His understanding of how bodies operated and the science of human anatomy enabled him to make this discovery and apply it to the creation of his monster. Walton wished to sail to the arctic because no sailor has ever reached it. The monster was created against his will, his ambition was to avenge his creation as a hideous outcast. These three characters were all driven by the same blind ambition.
Victor Frankenstein's upbringing in a perfect society ultimately led to the destruction of his life which coincided with the lives of those emotionally close to him. Victor was raised in an atmosphere where beauty and physical appearance define one's quality of life. This superficial way of life results in a lost sense of morals and selfishness, which in turn produces a lost sense of personal identity. This can cause a feeling of failure and resentment in the later stages of life which, in Victor's case, can be externalized into a form of hatred directed toward himself.
Victor Frankenstein, the monster’s creator, is the victim of his own pride. An ego unchecked is a dangerous thing. But in truth, it really just shows Victor’s humanity. He is privileged, educated, talented, loved, adored, but he is not perfect. His flaw is his own ego and pride. Without doubt, this is the result of a childhood where he was overindulged. Overindulged to the extent he was given a little girl “Elizabeth” as a “present”, whom he considered from childhood “mine only” (Shelley 21). Little wonder the twenty year old Victor would think he could create, control and command life. But Victor as with any indulged child did not take the time to learn much from his parents about parenting and fath...
In Frankenstein, Shelley creates two very complex characters. They embody the moral dilemmas that arise from the corruption and disturbance of the natural order of the world. When Victor Frankenstein is attending school, he becomes infatuated with creating a living being and starts stealing body parts from morgues around the university. After many months of hard work, he finishes one stormy night bringing his creation to life. However, “now that [Victor] had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart” (Chambers). Right after Victor realizes what he has done, he falls into deep depression and must be nursed back to health by his friend. Victor spends the rest of the story facing consequences and moral problems from creating unnatural life. When he realizes that the ‘monster’ has killed his brother, even though no one believes him, he feels responsible for his brother’s murder because he was responsible for the existence of the ‘monster’. Also feeling responsible, Victor...