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Compare and contrast various aspects of the film Frankenstein and the novel by Mary Shelley
Main themes in frankenstein by mary shelley
Compare and contrast various aspects of the film Frankenstein and the novel by Mary Shelley
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The original Frankenstein novel, published in 1817, created a unique novel that set a new tone for gothic fiction. Mary Shelley created such a story that has affected literature that has carried on for two centuries, and her novel still continues to be read today. The original movie, however, is very contrastive to the novel. The first movie was released in 1931, and it was directed by James Whale. The book and the movie are quite different, but there are some similarities that help get the main point across. The book and the movie are similar and different in terms of characters, setting, and content. Even though the original movie was the first movie ever made based on the novel, it is immensely different compared to the novel.
In Mary Shelley’s work, she created certain characters to play important roles in the story, such as Walton, Victor, Henry, the Creature, and Elizabeth. Each character played a significant role in the book that helped guide the story in a certain direction. In the movie, however, Walton did not exist, and an extra character that was not needed. His name was Fritz, and he was Victor’s assistant in creating the creature and capturing bodies from graves. He was by
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Victor’s side throughout the entire story. The movie also included the same characters as the book, but Victor Frankenstein’s name was Henry Frankenstein and Henry Clerval’s name was Victor Moritz. The switch in the character’s names made it very confusing to follow the movie, but still got the main point across. The content of the book was also very different from the movie.
In the novel, Mary Shelley made it so that Victor ran into Walton and began to tell his story about his creation and the story behind it. In the movie, Walton does not exist and the movie begins by Victor and Fritz collecting dead bodies from the cemetery to use for his experiment. They are similar in terms of the fact that the Creature was created in a lab and a strike of lightning that created electricity was what brought him to life. Victor was still his creator, or his father, but in the movie, he did not abandon him because he was ugly. He would explain that he was young and give excuses as to why he was a monster to his professor, but nevertheless, stayed by his side the entire movie unlike in the
novel. Setting was also comparable between the novel and the film. In Mary Shelley’s work, most of the setting takes place around Victor’s college in Ingolstadt or London. In the movie, the setting takes place in Goldstadt where Victor attended university or around a barn where Victor’s creature was burned to death for being a monster. A setting that was similar between the two was the lab, for that was where the creature was created and a spark of electricity brought him to life. Another setting might be where Victor collected dead bodies from graves in both the movie and the film to create his being. In both the novel and the film, they were very different, but still shared a few similarities that help tell the same original story written. For the first movie being made about the film, it did not follow the same plot line that one would expect to see. There are few similarities and many differences between the film and the novel, for they were comparable in character, plot, and content based from the original. Mary Shelley’s work has been created and based upon multiple times since her publishing over two centuries ago.
stupid. He was unable to talk or read. The monster would just rome the world
First, Before the monster is created Victor says that he hopes this creation would bless him as his creator, and that the creature would be excellent nature and would be beautiful. After the creature is created Shelley creates sympathy for him by Victor’s description of him in a unique yet horrific way, “he’s ‘gigantic,” “deformed,” “yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath” this makes the creature abhorrent to typical humans. When thinking of the descriptions together, Shelley has created a vivid, unnatural image of the monster in the mind’s eyes. The language Shelley uses is powerful and emotive “shall I create another like yourself, whose joints wickedness
After Walton and his crew get stuck in some ice, they notice a gigantic man in the distance. Just a couple hours later, Victor Frankenstein washes up to their boat on a sheet of ice. Walton welcomes him onto his ship, and Victor tells the story of this thing in the distance, which is his creation. In the first four chapters, Victor talks about his family and how they came to be. He also talks about his education, and what made him create this monster. Walton and Frankenstein are similar because they both switched what they wanted to do before pursing their current occupation. “I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted with my failure and how heavily I bore the disappointment”(Shelley 2). This shows how much Robert Walton desired to be a poet and also how distraught he was after his failure. Walton also reveals how he was not well educated, even though he loved reading. So after he failed at trying to become educated, and becoming a poet, he inherited his cousins fortune, and became a sea captain. Like Walton, Frankenstein did not do
...vel, passing one story onto his sister and the reader, though he does serve a purpose as the character who sees wrong in what he is doing, contrasting with the other two protagonists. Walton is also the neutral approach towards the whole tale, providing the story with a ‘filter’ to remove Victor’s opinions and perspectives that are invalid and unimportant to the tale. Walton is also used as a parallel to the monster and Victor but is often perceived as the ‘shadow’ of Victor. Shelley includes many of her personal life within the novel as is evident in the monster’s upbringing, her childhood contrasts greatly with that of Victor’s. Though I don’t believe he is included just as a mechanical narrative device, I believe that he is used to represent the reader. In a way that states that what he does at the end of the novel is what every budding scientist should do: stop.
Victor had created the creature with the vision from his dreams of a strong, tall perfect being with no flaws. His years of study with the unnatural and science had come to this final conclusion and masterful idea that he was determined to finish. To his surprise, he had created the opposite, “For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. 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) Victor is saddened by what he thinks of as a failure. He leaves his own apartment to go sleep in his court yard outside following his creation. He begins to isolate himself from the creature because of his fear of the creature’s outward appearance. He loses all hope for the creature without even learning anything about him. The fact that Shelley begins to refer to the being that Victor created as a “creature” shows Victor’s ignorance and lack of acceptance. It is Victor’s prejudice that blinds him of the creature’s true potential due to the unwanted preconception that follows the creature as he finds meaning in
Frankenstein is a fictional story written by Mary Shelly. It was later adapted into a movie version directed by James Whales. There are more differences than similarities between the book and the movie. This is because, the movie is mainly based on the 1920’s play, other than the original Mary Shelly’s book Frankenstein. A text has to be altered in one way or the other while making a movie due to a number of obvious factors. A lot of details from the book were missing in the movie, but the changes made by Whales were effective as they made the movie interesting, and successful.
Both characters from the novels Prometheus and Victor Frankenstein were similar because they were both intelligent. Victor loved science, he sued to go on journeys to seek more information about life and death, because at home he had nobody to teach him.” My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child's blindness, added to a student's thirst for knowledge. (Victor Frankenstein quotes on education). And he even studied abroad to see more knowledge on his favorite subject. This created major conflicts with his professor at the university but also admiration among professors and peers.
Most Americans have some idea of who Frankenstein is, as a result of the many Frankenstein movies. Contrary to popular belief Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a scientist, not a monster. The "monster" is not the inarticulate, rage-driven criminal depicted in the 1994 film version of the novel. Shelley’s original Frankenstein was misrepresented by this Kenneth branagh film, most likely to send a different message to the movie audience than Shelley’s novel shows to its readers. The conflicting messages of technologies deserve being dependent on its creator (address by Shelley) and poetic justice, or triumph over evil (showed by the movie) is best represented by the scene immediately preceding Frankenstein’s monster’s death.
Victor, who is described as a beautiful man with no apparent flaws. He created another life and kept it a secret until the monster actually came to life. Mary Shelley knew what she was doing because she wanted to portray Victor as being a loyal and caring person. Shelley wanted us to view victor as the one who does not need to take responsibility for their actions but it all catches up with him in the end. Victor is selfish and doesn’t want to take responsibility for his actions, or his creation. Victor states, “I had desired it with and ardor that far exceeded moderation: But now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and the breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” (Shelley, Kindle) When reading this quote, you can see that he does not care anything about the monster after it has come to life. He spent all that time on it for him to judge the monster by its appearance instead of treating his creation like a child and teaching him everything he needs to know. Now all he knows is neglect and
James Whale's adaptation of the story of Frankenstein, while it is clearly and deservedly a horror classic, is tremendously less than it could have and SHOULD have been. There are unexplainable deviations from the novel, such as the fact that Dr. Frankenstein's name was, for some reason, changed from Victor in the novel to Henry in the film, and the film itself really only covers about a quarter to a third of one chapter in the book - that's how much has been left out. There was probably only about 5% or 6% of the full story included in this film, and I am willing to guess that the sheer magnitude of ignored material in the original story is at least as much of a reason that there were so many subsequent Frankenstein films (and Re-Animators and whatnot) as was the film's commercial success. This may, in fact, be one of those rare cases where the imitators may have just wanted to do it right, or at least tell the REST of the story.
...the downfall of Frankenstein and the monster. Frankenstein found the secret to life, though he applies his gained knowledge and ambition to his own selfish goals, which wind up destroying him and those closest to him. Walton has something in common with Frankenstein; his ambition to achieve something that no man has ever accomplished before. The difference between Victor and Walton is tat Walton decides to turn back. The monster on the other hand never wanted any fame or glory; his ambition was motivated by the thirst for revenge. Ultimately even Frankenstein, on his deathbed, realized the harsh consequences of his actions. Victor states, "Seek happiness in tranquility, and avoid ambition..." (Shelley 229).
The psychoanalytic perspective tells us that behavior is determined by one’s past experiences and that these experiences have been locked in the unconscious mind and the character is unaware of them. This perspective is also based strongly on Freud’s studies of the mind. The major experience in Victor’s life was the death of his mother. Victor was very close to his mother and she died before he left to go to college in Ingolstadt. Shelley wanted to make a point by placing Victor’s mother’s death before he left for the university, to act as his separation from her and to show that he was unable to continue life in the way a usual human being could. Victor’s studies at Ingolstadt strictly went against his father’s words and could be seen as Shelley placing a type of Oedipus complex in his career pursuits. This led Victor to creating the monster to have someone he could be with. After working for 2 years, Victor finished his creation and said, “Now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (...
If Victor had nurtured the creature, the creature would have been gentle and kind. The creature’s environment, experiences, as well as actions changed his personality. Mary Shelley does a great job of showing what the creature endured, and how everything he went through led him to his
These movies show how the original image of Dr. Frankenstein’s creation has changed over time, and how he can be altered into many different forms. Contrary to popular belief, Frankenstein’s creation is not a huge, green, evil monster with neck bolts. The monster is a very enduring character, and his different qualities are shown in Frankenweenie and Edward Scissorhands. Both of the following films dab in the Gothic style, and portray the different qualities from the novel Frankenstein. From dogs to humans with scissor hands, Frankenstein’s monster appears in so many things in pop culture today.
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.