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Literary analysis for frankenstein
Critical analysis of frankenstein monster
Literary analysis for frankenstein
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The over-focus on a goal or mission that takes over and consumes someone’s entire life is how I define an obsession. Mary Shelley exhibits the theme of obsession to her readers as harmful to themselves and those around them. Ambition is described as the solemn desire for achievement, such as power, integrity, fame, or fortune. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley shows her reader how ambition and obsession can sometimes lead to disappointment and harm to the characters or ourselves. Victor Frankenstein is a prime example as displayed in chapters four through six. Victor is ambitious and has let this lead to an obsessed study in science, more specifically anatomy, and the dead and decaying, that he lets himself slip into an unhealthy state. …show more content…
Victor states, “After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter” (Shelley 31). Victor has become so fixated with the study of anatomy that he has started to “recognize too much”.
Knowledge is dangerous in Victor’s eyes. He knows now that what he was doing while trying to create his giant being that he is stepping over the lines and trying to be like God. Victor states to Walton, “Learn from me, if not by my precept, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” (31). Victor understands that what he has done was wrong and he had let the obsession own him. He tried to be more superior than the one creator who started this world and has created what he believes is a monster. His obsession for creating this being has controlled his life, Victor almost slipped away into nothing while trying to be the ultimate creator, leaving behind his family and few friends. Luckily one man close enough to Victor was able to nurse him back to normal health and restore his tranquility, this man’s name was Henry Clerval. Victor states “We passed a fortnight in these perambulations: my health and spirits had long been restored, and they gained additional strength from the salubrious air I breathed, the natural incidents of our progress, and the conversation of my friend”
(45). In this quote Victor is explaining how he feels the life coming back into him, he is regaining the strength that he lost and enjoying the company from Henry. Victor Frankenstein has let the ambition of his creature slip into a dark tunnel of obsession; this led to ruining his health and what he thinks of creating a monster. We need to watch what we let overcome us in life, sometimes it’s for betterment and others for worse. In this case in the novel I think it overcame Victor Frankenstein for the worse.
Did you ever notice that human nature revolves around needs, desires, and wants? There are different types of needs, such as safety, social, basic needs. These desires and impulses gives us our survival and the ability to function in the environment we live in. Our subconscious mind is responsible for the decisions we make, and such impulses makes us commit actions we have no control of. In literature, we are able to understand and judge the character’s behavior more so than our own.
One in the Same The creature, a creation by the selfish and glory seeking scientist, Victor notes, “Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames”( Shelley 186). Before vanishing, the creature expresses these last words to communicate his frustration toward all of the circumstances in his life. He describes all the challenges in his life as “burning miseries” because they have been with him his entire life, and they force him to live his life in ways he did not imagine.
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
After bringing life to something seemingly horrible, Victor Frankenstein reveals his personality of avoidance and arrogance. Instead of facing the creature he created, he runs away from the problem. His motivations for the experiment vary, but there is one clear one that he even admits. "The world," he says, "was to me a secret which I desired to divine" (Shelley 18). Victor tells us that he's curious, and more importantly that he's always been this way. Victor has been raised in a very loving family. His father and mother were kind parents who loved all of their children, and even adopted some children. Victor, however, grows up a little indulged and perhaps because of this, he is selfish. He is stubborn and unyielding about many things. For
Victor is so engulfed by his work that he is unaware of what is going on around him. He “bore onwards [with his work], like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success” and he wants to “pour a torrent of light into our dark world" (Shelley 55). Blinded by his yearning for making new discoveries, Victor thinks that his knowledge of the sciences will be enough for him to be successful. However, he does not understand that in order to create an auspicious relationship between him and his creation, he needs to have knowledge of society as well. Once his creation is animated, Victor is unable to see that all the creature wants is to be loved and accepted. The creature craves the maternal love that Victor denies him. From the beginning, Victor is unable to realize the significance of his creation. He describes how the creature’s “yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath... [and] his hair was of a lustrous black... [and] his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips” (Shelley 58). He immediately focuses on the negative features of his creation, and does not even attempt to learn the positive qualities. If Victor uses more social skills, rather than his knowledge of the sciences to manage his creation, all of the destruction the creation causes could have been
Monsters, in myths and legends, are ugly beasts with vicious tendencies and overbearing powers who bring suffering and agony to those who cross their paths, regardless of intention. However, the same cannot be said for Mary Shelley's monster, the Creation. Victor Frankenstein's lab experiment emphasizes the danger of not taking responsibility for one's own actions and knowledge, by being an instrument of Victor's suffering.
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.
Mary shelley depicts the ambition of man as the source of fallibility in the novel Frankenstein. She uses the characters Victor Frankenstein and Robert Walton as two of the major examples of this . Both of these men desired to be glorified by men through scientific achievements, but their unchecked ambition eventually leads to their non-fulfillment. Blinded by dreams of glory, they fail to consider the consequences of their actions.
In any novel the author is free to create and shape their characters in whatever way they see fit. In Frankenstein, Shelley does an excellent job of shaping her characters, be it however minute their part in the story, so that the reader gets a clear picture of Shelley's creations. It seems that each character in Shelley's Frankenstein is created by Shelley to give the reader a certain impression of the character. By doing this Shelley creates the characters the way she wants us to see them. She tells us certain things about them and gives them certain traits so that they will fit into the story the way she wants them to. In particular I will examine the characters of the monster, Elizabeth, and old man De Lacey.
Dreams and Ambitions in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley One aspect the novel Frankenstein written by Mary shelly is how dreams and ambitions can sometimes result in disappointment or even tragedy. I will show this by analysing the main characters of the story ----------------------------------------------------------------------
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, one of the main themes surrounds the idea of defining obsession and classic obsessive behaviors. Obsession itself is a force of devastation for one’s social, personal, mental, and physical life. At one point, obsession must be a passion, of which has amazing side effects. The synonym, passion, may resemble obsession in the beginning, though the main difference between the two is that obsession consumes the life that it holds. In the end, obsession ruins us.
I am here to present my vision of the play known as Frankenstein’s monster, a play once directed by Tom Hallyer. Frankenstein’s monster is set in a gloomy era around the time of the First World War. A mad scientist by the name of Doctor Frankenstein plans to gather the bodies of the fallen soldiers from the war, combining them in his secret laboratory. Frankenstein is soon forced to choose between his fiancée Elizabeth and his own creations life. He is quick to make the judgement but after the decision was made the monster had escaped and ran off seeking refuge in the forest, he spots a bright light in the distance and follows it leading to the home of an old blind man known as De Lacey along with his son Felix and daughter Agatha. The monster
“Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very
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.
From the onset of Victor’s youth, his earliest memories are those of “Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember” (ch. 4) This is the first example of obsession that we see in the novel. This drive to learn the ‘hidden’ laws of nature is the original driving force that sets the plot in motion. Without this, Victor would have never embarked on his unholy quest to overcome mortality, thus leading to his creation of his monster.