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Mary Shelley connection to Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein's relationship with the creature
Victor Frankenstein's relationship with the creature
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Recommended: Mary Shelley connection to Frankenstein
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein there are several parallels that can be drawn. One of the major parallels in the novel is the connection between Victor Frankenstein and the creature he creates; there is an interesting relationship between these two characters. Frankenstein and his creation are not blood related, however, their similarities bond the two. Despite their dislike for one another and their physical differences Frankenstein shares many characteristics with his creation, throughout the novel we see each of them find comfort in nature, become isolated from society, and seek revenge towards those who have wronged them. There is significance in these similarities; if Frankenstein’s creation had not been physically deformed they would not be as similar. Furthermore, Frankenstein can be held accountable for his creation’s hardships. In pursuit of knowledge, he becomes completely absorbed and creates what he calls a “demonical corpse”; several of the traits that the monster has acquired are a result of his deformities. For example, he has become isolated because others find him hideous, and for that reason he retreats to nature where no one can judge him. With all that in mind, the monster holds a lot of resentment towards his creator, Victor Frankenstein.
Nature acts as a means of comfort for both Victor and this creation. Even in the darkest of days the pleasures of nature have managed to soothe their souls and shed some light upon the darkness. We see several points throughout the novel where the enchanting wonders of nature have given them pleasure and hopefulness. Frankenstein speaks about how nature causes him to “forget the passing cares of life” (Shelley 82). Nature has a deep and profound effect upon Victor, amidst the...
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...dence reinforcing the parallels between Frankenstein and his creation. Frankenstein and his creation share a love for nature, have secluded themselves from others, and seek revenge towards those who have wronged them. Respectively, these three themes fit very well with one another. Finding pleasure in nature and isolation coincide with one another. During the concluding chapters of the novel we see the interplay between isolation and vengeance. Victor and the monster’s solitude have generated a deep hatred for one another. These resemblances are important and would not exist if Frankenstein has created an attractive being. The monsters unpleasant appearance causes him and Victor a lot of hardship. Would Victor and his creation be more alike if his creation had been attractive?
Works Cited
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. n.p., 2014. Feedbooks. Web. 13 February 2014.
Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein is a novel narrated by Robert Walton about Victor Frankenstein and the Monster that he creates. Frankenstein grew up surrounding himself with what he loved most, science. He attended Ingolstadt University where he studied chemistry and natural philosophy, but being involved in academics was not enough for him. Frankenstein wanted to discover things, but did not think about the potential outcomes that could come with this decision. Frankenstein was astonished by the human frame and all living creatures, so he built the Monster out of various human and animal parts (Shelley, 52). At the time Frankenstein thought this creation was a great discovery, but as time went on the Monster turned out to be terrifying to anyone he came in contact with. So, taking his anger out on Frankenstein, the Monster causes chaos in a lot of people’s lives and the continuing battle goes on between the Monster and Frankenstein. Throughout this novel, it is hard to perceive who is pursuing whom as well as who ends up worse off until the book comes to a close.
With the same hands Frankenstein built the monster, he holds his dying wife. Throughout Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and his creation fight against each other as ambition, abandonment and the lack of responsibility result in the downfall of both. Frankenstein represents a parental figure to his creation. Their conflict arises through the years leading up to Frankenstein’s creation and continues for years while taking the lives of multiple people. Frankenstein’s knowledge and ambition, the creature’s life in isolation, and the poor relationship between the two result in their conflict.
Victor Frankenstein is originally a happy character that loves to learn and read a large variety of books. He was a fiery individual who sought to understand all knowledge; regardless of how practical the information was. Evidence of this is when his father tells him not to worry about fictional writers like Cornelius Agrippa. Yet, Frankenstein states, “But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew more. I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple” (21). Frankenstein embodies the movement in science to understand everything, and that is not necessarily a good thing (Storment 2). Frankenstein only understands that this train of thought is bad when he reaches the pinnacle of knowledge and produces the creature. The fruits of Frankenstein’s labor end up costing him the lives of his friends and family, as well as his own sanity. The feeling of guilt thrives in Frankenstein because he knows his work was the direct cause of the chaos in his life. In Frankenstein’s case, his goal of total enlightenment led to his pitiful demise. Frankenstein’s creature was not originally a monster. He is born with good intentions and is a gentle- although atrocious looking- being until he learns of the sins of the human race. The ultimate factor in the creature’s progression from harmless to
In “Frankenstein,” Mary Shelley captures various similar characteristic between Victor Frankenstein and his monster. He and his creation are very alike in personality. They shared an eagerness to learn, and a thirst for revenge. They also showed a sense of gratefulness for nature. Even in their most depressing moods, the ways of nature always seemed to calm them. In the deaths of William and Justine, Victor found peace staring upon the glaciers of Montanvert, it “filled [him] with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul, and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy.” Like Victor, nature seemed to calm the monster. After he is disclaimed Felix, Agatha, and De Lacey, he felt demoralized, but was appeased when “the pleasant sunshine, and the pure air of day, restored [him] to some degree of tranquility…”
In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, many similarities can be seen between the creature and his creator, Victor Frankenstein. While Victor and the creature are similar, there are a few binary oppositions throughout the book that make them different. The binary oppositions in the novel serve as thematic contrast; and some of the most illustrative oppositions between the two characters are on the focus of family, parenthood, isolation and association with others.
Over time, the name “Frankenstein” has become a reference to the green-skinned, lumbering monster in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, rather than his creator Victor Frankenstein. However, this is not necessarily a careless mistake. Infact, if one were to define monstrosity as the voluntary separation of oneself from humanity through unnaturally evil behaviors, then the true monster of Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, would be Victor Frankenstein. Victor best fits this definition because, not only does he engage in malevolent behavior such as attempting to control nature, but the comparisons between him and his creation emphasize that he allowed his obsessions to strip him of his humanity. Also, Frankenstein and his creation had distinctly
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and the monster that he creates are very similar. For example, Victor creates the monster to be like himself. Another similarity is that the anger of both Victor and the monster is brought about by society. One more parallel between Victor and the monster is that they both became recluses. These traits that Victor and the monster possess show that they are very similar.
Victor Frankenstein had become what he did by the end of the novel because of this creature, in a sense making the creature his creator. The creature is the cause of Victor’s distress and negative emotions, reciprocating what Victor had done to him. Victor was so horrified by what he had made that he couldn’t look at the creature; he did not even give it a name. The way Victor treats his creation is extremely poor and unfair to the creature who, after some time in the world, regrets being given
The denotation of the word divine indicates that nature is very strong and God-like. It is worth noting that Victor’s love but lastly disillusionment with nature depicts his love and disillusionment with life itself, after the monster makes his life a living a nightmare. In very many ways the monster depicts Victor’s life. In the real sense, Frankenstein’s monster is an outcast and therefore does not belong to the human society (Shelley, 33). The traits held by the monster such as alienation from the society, its unfulfilled desire for friendship with whom to share life and his struggle for revenge are all evident in his creator, Victor. The impact of nature is evident across the text, however, for Victor, the natural global strength to console him declines when he finds out that the monster will haunt him wherever he goes. At the end Victors chases the monster obsessively, nature, in the form of the Arctic desert, acts a representation backdrop for his original struggle against the monster (Shelley,
As the truth behind Frankenstein’s monster’s life comes to light, sympathy sets in. To Frankenstein’s monster, life was unknown to him from the beginning of it’s life; Victor fled the lab and fell ill as soon as he awakened. Frankenstein’s monster had a life full of confusion and deceit from humans. To him, humans were the true monsters; they would not accept him in any way. As the monster is unhappy with it’s creator, it exclaims, ”Cursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust” (90). The monster knowns it’s appearance to humans is too vial to deal with yet, all he wants is solace. As the creator of the “monster”, Victor regrets his decision to search to the secret to life. After he made the monster, Victor never realizes what he had done wrong: not take responsibility for his creation. Going on the explain to Victor his predicament, the monster says “God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid from its very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested” (90). This shows the desire to be accompanied by someone/something: a monster as hideous as itself. It shows the duality of Victor as both caregiver and creator, acting as the monster’s actual god. The monster goes on to say that all walks of life have their
Throughout Frankenstein, one assumes that Frankenstein’s creation is the true monster. While the creation’s actions are indeed monstrous, one must also realize that his creator, Victor Frankenstein, is also a villain. His inconsiderate and selfish acts as well as his passion for science result in the death of his friend and family members and ultimately in his own demise. Throughout the novel, Shelley investigates the idea of monstrosity. She makes the point that a monster does not have to be genuinely evil in order to be considered monstrous.
“Victor’s reliance upon splitting, the division of the world into ‘all good’ and ‘all bad’ objects, betrays the inability to acknowledge ambivalence, or to integrate the good and bad self into a single totality” (Berman 63). This “splitting” results in his rejection of his own creation, regardless of the creature’s innate innocence. When Frankenstein undertakes bringing a corpse back to life he unwisely meddles with powerful forces of nature. “...we are confronted immediately by the displacement of God and woman from the acts of conception and birth…” (Berman 58). This creature who he described as a monster is, in fact, a mirror image of himself. “Victor Frankenstein’s evident longing for another, despite his close friendship with Henry Clerval and his betrothal to Elizabeth, leads to the creation of a being who becomes the Inadequate Other which is, in reality, Victor himself” (Kestner 69). In the eyes of Frankenstein his creation is a failure; lacking human resemblance and harboring beastly qualities. Afterwards, his narcissistic personality appears once again as Majken Hirche describes: “The narcissist’s ultimate nightmare is to have his fallibilities revealed, because this will disrupt his self-image and protection against his painful unconscious. It is of no surprise then, that we see Victor Frankenstein’s narcissism most starkly exposed shortly after he has succeeded in creating a
In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and the monster are connected in a complex relationship. Frankenstein’s monster is submissive to his creator, Victor, who is the only man with the knowledge of creating another of his kind. On the other hand, Frankenstein is passive to his creation, because physically, it is stronger than he and has the capability of murdering his entire circle of family and friends, and it doesn’t take much effort for him to do so. Their relationship is not marked by a “Super-Hero” pattern.
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein we are introduced early in the story to one of the main characters Victor Frankenstein and subsequently to his creation referred to as the monster. The monster comes to life after being constructed by Victor using body parts from corpses. As gruesome as this sounds initially we are soon caught up in the tale of the living monster. Victor the creator becomes immediately remorseful of his decision to bring the monstrous creation to life and abandons the borne creature. Victor describes his emotions and physical description of his creation as follows:
In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses the motif of monstrosity to convey the theme that a person’s outward appearance is not what makes them a monster but rather their actions or inactions that classify true monstrosity. Despite the fact that the monster Victor Frankenstein creates is a literal example of monstrosity in the novel there are many parts that give meaning to monstrosity within character’s actions. Although Victor appears normal, since he is human his ambitions, secrets, selfishness, and inaction makes him a monster himself. Along with monstrous characters the pursuit of knowledge that is seen in Victor, his monster, and Walton in Frankenstein prove that knowledge can be a monstrosity. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is created using the life stories of different characters in the novel. The novel itself could be seen as a monster created similarly to Victor’s monster.