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Literary criticism of Frankenstein
Key themes of Frankenstein
Frankenstein Literary Analysis Essay
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Recommended: Literary criticism of Frankenstein
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is a well known novel written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and first published in 1818. This first edition included some remarks made by her husband Percy Shelley, which the author later revised for the publishing of the second edition in 1831 . A thought-provoking work set in the enlightened European society of the eighteenth century, Frankenstein masterly addresses themes such as responsibility, abandonment, and the ambitious pursuit of knowledge to depict the dreadful effects that may arise from scientific exploration. The novel narrates the story of Victor Frankenstein, a scientist, who obsessed with ‘unfolding to the world the deepest mysteries of creation’, achieves to animate a creature made of dead bodies (p. 38). Nevertheless, terrified by his own work, Frankenstein abandons the monster to his fate. Consequently, the being embarks on a journey in search of human acceptance and affection. Unable to satisfy his yearning, the creature seeks for revenge and turns Frankenstein’s life into one marked by destruction and death. Although, ...
In the classic novel, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley saturates her plot with profuse foreshadowing, homages, and contrasting images. The contrasted images, used to set up foil characters, scenes, or ideas, accentuate their respective significance and traits. One of the more noteworthy contrasting images is found in Shelley's use of the Natural and Artificial.
The novel Frankenstein is a story about a scientist who wants to bring the dead to life after the death of his mother. He realizes that he can gain publicity and honor as he attempts to use science in order to create a human from the works of men. When he is successful he realizes that this idea is irreverent to the magnificent creature he wanted to create. The prestige and power he once held dear became his worst enemy as the monster makes a mess of Frankenstein’s life. This creature is left abandoned to find a way to survive without the help of society. He is alienated with unfulfilled desires such as friendship, acceptance, and companionship. These desires turn into revenge against his creator when he cannot be accepted by the society.
Human cognition is the study of how people think and understand. As part of growing up, there are four stages called the cognitive developmental stages that an individual goes through. From the sensory motor stage to the formal operational stage, human beings learn to interpret their surroundings of everyday life experiences. However, in the case of the Creature in the novel, Frankenstein, he was never developed in a cognitive way, and therefore, the creature was passively torn by opposing forces of human beings in his surrounding environments. Overall, cognitive development and the relation between the Creature’s turn towards violence is a result of neglect, psychological indifferences, and lack of socialization skills.
Would a mother be responsible for his adult son’s misdeeds? In Mary Shelley 's book, “Frankenstein” Victor creates a creature who then kills numerous amount of people. Some may speculate that Victor is responsible for the murders, but the creature is the one to blame. Victor Frankenstein is not responsible for the actions of the Creature. The Creature has 100 percent control over his actions and has logical decision making. The one who does the crime, should also be the one who takes the responsibility of the crime.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is more than just a story of a creation gone bad; it is rather a story of evil that compares Victor Frankenstein to Prometheus and his monster as a God-like figure. Mary was able to do this by all of the influences that she had. These influences made her able to write a new, "modern", Prometheus that did not directly call upon God, but, however, it did directly call on evil.
Not so long ago, relative to the world at large, in picturesque Geneva not so far from Lake
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Maurice Hindle. Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.
Chubby fingers grasp the brightly colored surface of the unfamiliar “thing”. You stare, eyes filled with innocence and delight. The material crinkles emitting a noise you somehow find funny… but then, you find everything funny. Everything in this mysterious place is so strange, but at the same time, so fascinating. You press the “toy” to your nose and rub the soft fabric against it. Toy, that’s a new word you learned. The creature with the large hands that give you everything in life, has taught you this.
Since I spent last weekend in Vancouver attending the funeral of a beloved aunt who died on Good Friday, you could say that I've been pondering a lot about death and dying lately. It didn't help either that I chose to bring my copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with me to read on the plane rides there and back, seeing as this story deals with the creation of a new form of life and the deaths that result from it. Being in this rather morbid frame of mind, I decided for this commentary just to take a closer examination of life and death as contained within the kind of gothic narrative of this early science-fiction horror story. It's almost like a Yin-Yang pairing between the two: Victor controls the ability to create Life (an ability that is usually looked on as being feminine) through his scientific and medical knowledge, and the Creature controls the ability to create Death (an ability usually looked on as being masculine) through his incredible strength and physical abilities. But although the Yin-Yang of Taoist thought brings harmony to the universe, this pairing of light and dark brings nothing but destruction to those it touches.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. The 1818 Text. New York: Oxford UP, 1998.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. Edited with an Introduction and notes by Maurice Hindle. Penguin books, 1992
Matching green "trousers" and a pair of yellow boot-shaped feet completed what, essentially, was a visually ironic mishmash of superhero and what a child's vision of what a robotized Frankenstein's monster would look like.
The practice of criticizing literature through psychoanalysis centers around Freud’s belief that authors, readers, and even characters are motivated by unconscious yet controlling desires. These desires are filtered, made to be as societally acceptable as possible, and rationalized by their keeper’s mind all while keeping the original motives secreted away within the unconscious. Since filtering has disguised the desires, literary criticism is utilized in order to find that which has been unconsciously chosen as acceptable representations for them. The critic then deciphers aspects of the characters, like dreams, personal relationships, sexual habits (or lack thereof), or obsessions. Reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through a psychoanalytic lens, it is apparent that the death of Victor’s mother combined with his quick, solitary departure to parts unknown brought to life the damning aspects of the dependent yet self-involved personality his upbringing instilled within him.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. Edited with an Introduction and notes by Maurice Hindle. Penguin books, 1992
Then the monster or whatever it was popped out and jumped off the lift then suddenly the lift started to shake and shake and shake then the string on the left broke down and he kept on saying i'm going to die i'm going to die the lift shook even worse than the other time the other side started to collapse then it started going back together and his eyes were shocked but then he got to the end fell off and was looking around for the monster then he saw a shadow went towards it then suddenly he tripped on air he saw the monster it was about to get him then you heard a siren, er er er and it said people of this town get to safety monsters are on the loose a leak spilled out the science lab in our town and turned all the scientists in too monsters