Frankenstein Human Connection Essay

The theme of human connection is prominent in almost every aspect of society. As biological creatures, humans crave social and emotional interaction with one another. Authors have been writing to capture the desire and struggle for the human connection throughout many literary eras. The protagonists of such novels are unsatisfied with their lives the way they are. They crave the intense and extraordinary, going to extreme lengths to change their lives. The characters in the novels Frankenstein, Bartleby the Scrivener, To the Lighthouse, and The Crying of Lot 49, stretching from the romantic to the postmodern, seek a human connection: a deeper understanding of themselves and the world they live in, changing with the times as society itself progresses

and grows throughout literary eras.
The romantic era of literature is a reaction to the enlightenment. While the enlightenment stresses logic and reason, romanticism rejects the science and rationality common in the enlightenment and instead focuses on emotions, surrealism, and individuality. Romanticism uses nature as a way to express emotion and is commonly described in romantic novels. It shows a major, cultural shift from reason and science to imagination and emotion. Romantic characters are larger than life and are wholly engulfed by their emotions.
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Dr.

Frankenstein's creation seeks out a connection with the world despite his differences. Birthed out of a dangerous passion for knowledge and immediately abandoned, the creature is Dr. Frankenstein's attempt to recreate life. The monster is a romantic creature, alienated by society because of his physical differences, reliant and acting upon his emotional instability. He wants desperately to understand emotion and tries to discover compassion as he watches families and reads novels about life and sorrow. He has a passion for knowledge and craves companionship to the point of asking his creator for a female counterpart. He is thought to only want to cause harm, but he is truly misunderstood. The creature only becomes a true monster when Victor refuses to make him a wife, as he is condemned to a life of unsolicited isolation and confusion as he roams the countryside hated by everyone, including the one who made

him.
His search for the human connection was unsuccessful as the creature states, “I was dependent on none and related to none. The path of my departure was free..My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them”( CHAPTER 15, paragraph 5). He is plagued by his inability to understand his place in the world, who is he is, and what is his purpose. He wants to love and to be loved more than anything but he is denied that aspect of the human connect, first by Victor’s abandonment and then again in the scientist’s refusal of making him a friend. He wants to cause no pain; he only wants happiness and friendship, but turns to vengeance and violence when he is denied that. The monster is not taught to understand emotions, so he is unable to connect with others. Instead, he is cast as a monster by almost everyone he meets, despite his good intentions. He is not taught how to connect and so his search for the human connection fails. Because of his inability to understand others, the monster is alienated and becomes an outcast of society.
Realism, as a literary era, is a reaction to the emotional romantics. When romanticism steps outside the bounds of the ordinary world, realism attempts to show an objective reality. Influenced heavily by the industrial revolution and the mass growth of the urban middle class, the novels of the realist era related heavily to the individual. It became hard to deny that the individual is not a product of society and that the worker was not simply a cog in the machine that was the roaring capitalist economy. Realism era writers stressed society as a whole over the individual and portrayed everyday life as it actually occurred over the emotional exaggeration common of the romantic era.
In Herman Melville's’ Bartleby the Scrivener, Bartleby is a romantic soul lost among a realist world. His differences from the other characters in the novel make it difficult for him to connect. Bartleby is an example of the lack of human connection. Unlike the lawyer and his workers, Bartleby is not reasonable and responds fully to his own emotions. He is isolated from the rest of the characters who are fully involved in the their own worlds. His extreme individuality alienates him and prevents him from making connections with those who reach out to him. While the lawyer who hires him to work in his office tries desperately to understand Bartleby, he is unable to connect with the mysterious scrivener who once worked at the dead letter office. He pities his solitude, “ Immediately then the thought came sweeping across me, what miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed. His poverty is great but his solitude, how horrible...and here Bartleby makes his home, a sole spectator of solitude which he has seen all populous...” (Melville, Paragraph 88). Bartleby succumbs to his emotions and refuses change. He wants to do as he does, and he does nothing: he “prefers not to” do any task given to him. He wants to be alone and do nothing, to the point where it leads to his eventual death.
If Bartleby wants the companionship from the lawyer, he is also drawn to loneliness.

His lack of connection and rejection of normal human interaction characterizes Bartleby as an anti-character of the realist version of the people that fill this story. He is working against the mindless, menial job he does not care about: a direct opposition to the ideas of realism. Bartleby tries and fails to connect with the lawyer. Their mindsets differ too greatly for them to be able to relate to one another. The lawyer, try as he might, is unable to fully uncover bartleby; he can only assume. Bartleby is unable to express himself and therefore remains a mystery to everyone. His inaction, more so than his actions, alienate him from society and prevent him from making meaningful human

connections.
Literary modernism was a reaction to the Great War. The world was stunned at the horrors of the war and it was evident in the writing of the authors of the time. It was a reaction against science and focused on self consciousness. Authors wrote about the inner self and the decline of civilization and humanity. The dramatic effects of the industrialization and capitalism lead to loneliness and isolation.
Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse is a novel written in a stream of human consciousness. Woolf writes about the confusing connection between feelings and memories. This novel shows how the human mind does not always think in a linear fashion, but in jumbled pieces. Through screening the minds of several individuals, Woolf attempts to show how people search for meaning in their own ways from differing experiences. She demonstrates how people try to make sense of their perceptions in an effort to extract meaning from their lives. For example, the three main characters have varying ways of attempting to make a human connection. Mr. Ramsey demonstrates a very intellectual approach. As a philosopher, he uses his work to gain a reputation. He is obsessed with understanding and reasoning. Mrs. Ramsay makes connections through her social life. She is extremely devoted to her friends and families. She strongly relies on emotions and social order in an attempt to find meaning. Mrs. Ramsay has a deep understanding that suffering is inevitable in life and therefore constantly tries to make people happy through her matchmaking. Lily uses her art to connect with the world. She is told that art has no place for a woman, but she continues fighting the gender stereotype to paint. For Lily, art is a tool of preservation. Art, unlike the fleeting moments at the lighthouse, was permanent, capturing memories.
Woolf’s goal is to show that the world is made up of everyone’s individual perception of reality. Woolf writes, “What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years , the great revelation had never come. The Great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark” (161). There is no singular truth. The different characters in this novel are trying to understand the world around them and go about their quest for the human connection in differing manners. The meaning of life, and the way humans connect, is that there is no meaning, until it is given meaning. There is no one way to understand the world and it is each individual's personal quest to do so.