More handpicked essays just for you.
Frankenstein literary analysis
Understanding frankenstein novel
Family, friendship, companionship in frankenstein
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In the story Frankenstein, both Victor and his creation slowly become very similar in a multitude of ways. Victor begins to become more and more like the creature as they both have a thirst for knowledge that would ultimately cause them both despair, they both had a desire to be around and connect with a family, and they both gain a desire for revenge.
A major theme that plays throughout the story of Frankenstein is the quest for knowledge. Since a young age Victor was intrigued in his studies and sciences. This would soon lead to his motivation for creating the creature and ultimately his downfall entirely. Immediately after creating the creature, Victor faces a complete mood change. He is filled with disgust and anguish at the final results
…show more content…
of his work. Even after Victor returns to his original state, he learns that his creation was the cause of many deaths of his family and friends. These events forced Victor into a state of depression and leaves the reader questioning the power knowledge has on a person. Victor tells Walton, “you seek for knowledge and wisdom, as once I did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be serpent to sting you, as mine has been.” While this is before Victor informs Walton of his past and the endeavours he faced, it shows his regret for his thirst for knowledge. This directly correlates with the creature in the fact that he would later come to regret his constant thirst for knowledge as well. As the creature said to his creator, "I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge." As the creature began to learn more common knowledge like language, he developed a very similar mood swing that Victor experienced earlier in the story. A major cause of the depression and mood change that both the creature and Victor experienced was a direct result of their lack of companionship.
Throughout his entire life, Victor was always connected and formed bonds with his family and friends. After getting engulfed in his quest for knowledge, Victor begins to isolate himself from the outside world which leads to his mood changing. There is a short quote from Victor in which he is describing his honeymoon with Elizabeth which states, “Those were the last moments of my life during which I enjoyed the feeling of happiness.” This quote shows that Victor’s final moment of happiness was with a companion in which he loved. Later on his companion, Elizabeth, would be murdered along with his happiness. Victor became more reliant on his relationships with others as a source of comfort and happiness. However, the creature desires a companion to seek comfort in because he has never had one. The creature asks Victor to create a companion for him in order to fulfill his own happiness. As stated by the creature, “My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects. This being you must create.” After the suffering and struggles he faced, the creature realizes that his need for a companion will fill the void in his happiness. Victor in the same way seeks out his family in order to find comfort. With both of these characters shifting from a thirst for knowledge to a desire for companionship, they both ultimately never be able to accomplish their goal of achieving that
happiness. As previously mentioned both Victor and his creation faced many sorrowful events. These events would lead to them experiencing many different moods, one of which being probably the most important; anger. Victor’s anger came from the acts of violence and murder from his creation towards his family and friends. Victor eventually seeks out for vengeance against the source of all his pain and suffering. Victor even goes as far as saying to Walton “I am weak; but surely the spirits who assist my vengeance will endow me with sufficient strength.” Even at the brink of death, Victor wishes to fulfill his desire of vengeance even if it means for someone to carry it out. The creature on the other hand has a vengeance towards his creator, Victor. After coming to the realization of his depression and sorrowful life he faces, the creature begins to blame Victor for not only creating him, but also for never caring or nuturing him. The creature even displays his grief by telling Victor “You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing?” The creature makes it evident that he believes it is Victor at fault for what has caused his pain and suffering. This is interesting because both want revenge towards one another while they both just sought out companionship for their comfort. In conclusion, both of the characters become very similar with one another and they also become very intertwined in each others’ life. They both seek out comfort in companionship only to be deprived of this happiness and seek vengeance towards each other. Instead of the characters coming to this realization, they are both caught up in seeking vengeance to meet their needs. As shown in the end both characters, vengeance wouldn’t be able to put them at peace.
In the end, Victor and his creature focus solely on revenge which ultimately becomes their life purposes, similar to Prospero. Victor, after having lost everyone dear to him to the creature, makes his purpose to chase down the creature by travelling great desserts, seas and ice.1 His actions can be seen as a parallel to those of Prospero when he states, “My fate is here: I shall not run from it.”2 Both characters allow their emotions to make fairly irrational decisions towards revenge and punishment. In his last moments, Victor still pursues his newfound passion by attempting to go out into the artic alone while on the verge of death.3 He dies as a victim of his own decisions and desires which led to his misery and demise. Comparably, the creature grieves over his dead master’s body since his only hope of love and friendship disappeared.4 His searchfor revenge throughout the novel led to a similar misery as his creator’s. This is all in contrast to Caliban’s ending in A Tempest. He,
The phrase, “opposites attract” occurs in the thoughts of all the hopeless romantics available in the world. However, what is factual in life is also disturbingly accurate in books. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley encompasses the thoughts that hinder the sleep of many individuals across the world in her novel, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Victor Frankenstein’s foil, or opposite, happens to be his childhood friend Henry Clerval. Their relationship portrays the themes of life, or existence, and the pursuit of science.
As a tragic hero, Victor’s tragedies begin with his overly obsessive thirst for knowledge. Throughout his life, Victor has always been looking for new things to learn in the areas of science and philosophy. He goes so far with his knowledge that he ends up creating a living creature. Victor has extremely high expectations for his creation but is highly disappointed with the outcome. He says, “I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 35). Frankenstein neglects the creature because of his horrifying looks, which spark the beginning of numerous conflicts and tragedies. At this point, the creature becomes a monster because of Victor’s neglect and irresponsibility. The monster is forced to learn to survive on his own, without anyone or anything to guide him along the way. Plus, the monster’s ugly looks cause society to turn against him, ad...
An idea becomes a vision, the vision develops a plan, and this plan becomes an ambition. Unfortunately for Victor Frankenstein, his ambitions and accomplishments drowned him in sorrow from the result of many unfortunate events. These events caused Victors family and his creation to suffer. Rejection and isolation are two of the most vital themes in which many dreadful consequences derive from. Victor isolates himself from his family, friends, and meant-to-be wife. His ambitions are what isolate him and brought to life a creature whose suffering was unfairly conveyed into his life. The creature is isolated by everyone including his creator. He had no choice, unlike Victor. Finally, as the story starts to change, the creature begins to take control of the situation. It is now Victor being isolated by the creature as a form of revenge. All the events and misfortunes encountered in Frankenstein have been linked to one another as a chain of actions and reactions. Of course the first action and link in the chain is started by Victor Frankenstein.
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.
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
Is it possible for one thing to have such a negative impact on a person? Because of his creation, Victor Frankenstein was a recluse who did not tell anyone of his creation because he regretted creating it. Although this may be true, Victor only wanted to do good and help humanity by bringing loved ones back to life. In order to create life, he isolated himself from his family to work on his experiment. After the monster committed homicide several times, Victor could not tell any sane person the truth. And he felt guilt because his loved ones died too early and at the hands of his scientific advancement. To conclude, isolation, secrecy, and guiltiness are prevalent in the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
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.
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...
While Shelley describes Victor as a highly self-absorbed and obsessive scientist, Kenneth Branagh develops a more humane character, whose pain and emotions transform him into a delusional man. In the novel, Dr. Frankenstein often acts out of pure selfishness. For instance, Victor remains silent to save his reputation and lets Justine die on the morrow for a murder she didn’t commit (Shelley 59). He is even convinced that “[the] poor victim . . . [feels] not, as [he does], such deep and bitter agony” (Shelley 59). Because he deflects the suffering on himself, he proves once again that he is self-absorbed. However, Branagh’s Victor is more considerate of the people around him, as he tries to make his way through the villagers to stop Justine’s
Over the years there have been many remakes of the Frankenstein book as well as the movie.The original book was wrote by Mary Shelley but the movie was different in many ways and made a little later. The movie was made in 1950. Although there were many similarities between them as well. In the movie the names of the main characters are all switched up. The main character in the book was Victor and his friend was Henery. But in the movie the main character was Henry and his friend was Victor. In the book Victor created the created the creature by himself and in the movie the main character Henry had a helper. The helper was a short hunched back Igor looking man.
Gender inequality will always affect the way women are portrayed in society, the weaker, unnecessary, and other sex. It is not just a subject of the past, but still holds a name in society, however in the olden eras the way women were treated and are looked at, in a much more harsh condition. In Shakespeare’s Othello and Shelley’s Frankenstein women’s roles in the books are solely based on the way they are treated in their time period. The way women are portrayed in these books, demonstrate that they can never be in the same standing as men, considered the second option, and therefore will never have the same respect as men. In both Othello and Frankenstein women are treated as property, used to better men’s social standards, and lack a voice,
Fear is heavily instilled upon its readers in Frankenstein and Dracula. These gothic authors find many a way to create a dark, dreary mood and leave the reader feeling haunted yet very much intrigued. Their use of the supernatural allows for extreme emotions and situations. Fear and the sublime play heavily in Frankenstein, and evil is very much present in Dracula. The past comes to haunt the present throughout these novels. Through the author's use of adverse weather and dreary nights, the creatures of the night are as mysterious as ever.
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.
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