Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
The characterization of Victor’s creature, the monster, in the movie although somewhat dramatically different from Mary Shelley’s portrayal in the novel Frankenstein also had its similarities. Shelley’s views of the monster were to make him seem like a human being, while the movie made the monster out to be a hideous creation. The creature’s appearance and personality are two aspects that differ between the novel and movie while his intellectual and tender sides were portrayed the same.
From the novel the creature’s physical appearance is left up to each reader’s imagination. Shelley wrote: His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected
his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white
sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips (p.56).
Although I imagined the creature a human being with somewhat distorted features, another reader might view his appearance as a grotesque monster. On the other hand, the movie has shown him as a hideous monster created by a mad scientist. The monster’s appearance was focused on creating life out of dead body parts, sewing the pieces together that left horrid physical scars, and activating him with electricity.
The creature’s personality, or actions toward society, was displayed as being very calm and compassionate in the novel. He made many attempts to converse with society, but society feared and mistreated...
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...survive the cold season. The creature also requested a companion of the opposite sex, so he too could feel love from another instead of total rejection. At the very end of the novel and movie the creature was caught grieving over the death of his creator. Even though we are made to think that the creature was cold and destructive, in the end his human emotions prevailed.
The Frankenstein movie focused on outward action scenes rather than emotional themes to make it more popular and entertaining. It also portrayed Victor as a mad scientist engrossed in his desire to create human life. I was very impressed that the movie did keep some of the good qualities that came from the novel. I enjoyed the novel more, because it gave me the opportunity to put my imagination to work instead of having to accept someone else’s interpretation of Mary Shelley’s literary novel.
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
As the creature explores the teaching form the history book and the story and communication of the De Lacey family he insists, “I ought not to make the attempt until I had first become master of their language; which knowledge might enable me to make them overlook the deformity of my figure” (Shelley 95). Because the humans run away with fear in response to the creatures looks, he believes that the best way for him to relinquish their fear is by learning how to speak their language. Not only does he want to learn how to communicate with them, but he wants to become the “master of their language” so that his words overshadow the effects of his features. As many humans do, they judge the creature immediately without giving him an opportunity to explain his story. The creature is similar to humans in the way he responds to the judgment by others.
Since the original novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, to the multiple movie adaptations, the monster is almost always predicted as the monster of the story. It may be his physical appearance, from his tall, broad frame, to the signature screws in his neck. It may also be his unnatural upbringing and interpreted evil characteristics. We have grown to fear the monster, which ultimately, has masked the true monster, Dr. Frankenstein. With each coming movie, the good side of the monster is brought to light, while the real monster shows his true colors.
...h him, because we do not truly know how he felt. We know that he felt unloved and that he cannot even face to love himself, whereas we have always received love from our parents and the creature never received this. He was always alone, he never even had a companion of his own species which had ‘the same defects’ .The creature does not want to be alive any more, as he does not love the world he lives in any more, and this is the world we live in.
Continuing with the thread of human development, we see the creature's acquisition of language. The creature most craves this sort of knowledge:...
In this essay I will be looking at the differences between the creation of the first and second monster, how Mary Shelley portrays the feelings of Victor and the monster and the different myths and legends that she refers to within the novel. Victor Frankenstein had a wonderful life as a child: 'No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself' (p.39) He was loving and cared deeply for his family, especially for his foster-sister, Elizabeth, who he looked upon as his own, and saw as a 'more than sister' (p.37). Victor always had an 'eager desire to learn' (p.39) about 'the secrets of heaven and earth' (p.39). When he was thirteen years old he started studying the works of Cornelius Agrippa and the fact that his father called it all 'sad trash' (p.40) fuelled his curiosity and enthusiasm and caused him to study even more which was to him, 'the fatal impulse that led to my [his] ruin' (p.41).
In the movie, Frank is a large, bulky monster whose hands and feet are much larger than the rest of his body. His shoulders are very far back and neck a forward position giving him the look of a hunchback. Frank’s head is also skinny and long with the top being flat. In the novel, Victor Frankenstein describes his Creature by saying, “His limbs were in proportion” (Shelley 43). With no other descriptions about his body form, one can assume that Victor Frankenstein tried to model his Creature as closely as possible to a human. This means that Frankenstein’s Creature was probably a large, ugly humanoid, that would not have resembled Frank. Not only do Frank and the Creature’s proportions differ, the hue of their skins are also contrasting. The Creature has a tight yellow skin that
In the book Frankenstein Virtue is found at the margins of society more often than at its center. If this is so, Victor Frankenstein's Monster is a real find! His creature is an isolate of great sensitivity, kindness, and insight. In reality the Monster was not a bad person. He is quite distress and asks Victor, "What was I? Of my creation I was absolutely ignorant: but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property.... Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?" (Shelley 89). Finally the creature makes clear his great need: he is lonely, one of a kind, and unloved. He has learned the importance of position, family, and property. It also seems that the Monster was quite lonely and did not have any friends. He is unaccepted even by his own creator. No offence that the creature was ugly but it was not his fault because he did not created him. There are things to enjoy in the movie "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein", directed by the Kenneth Branagh. Branagh has used film techniques in such a way that it shows the sadness and loneliness of the monster. Yet the director interested in technical effects could highlight key ideas. For example, the excitement of opening in the frozen north, with one figure moving across the ice and receding into the distance while another suddenly appears hundreds of miles from land, could hold the attention of the audience. The relationship between isolated figures on a vast expanse of ice could serve as a poetic leit-motif in the film and retain a significant element of the novel. The cold and sterile elements assume greater meaning than a senselessly rampaging creature engulfed by fire. The monster wanted love from his creator and from the world. He did not have any friend in the world to share his sorrow. When the monster meets the blind father De Lacey, he realized his chance for friendship relied more on hearing than sight. The old man's blindness surely overcome human prejudice against physical ugliness, De Lacey commiserated with the Monster and graciously offered him help and friendship. But the reaction of the old man's sighted family upon seeing the Monster desperately clinging to their father deemed him a fiendish threat and the creature found himself drive out of the society of cottagers.
In Mary Shelly's novel Frankenstein, The Creature's sad fate is a representation of what it means to be different. Because of this unfortunate destiny, The Creature remains hidden and secluded. He feels the isolation forced upon him and wicked appearance.
In the book Gris Grimly's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein develops a creature with his bare hands who in my opinion even though has a non-human look is, in fact, a human. The two main reasons why I feel this way is because of the human-like emotions he conveys and show. As well as being able to speak English in a clear manner and the ability to learn like a human being. However, before I explain these two reasons more in depth I would like to give a bit of background information, as to the things the creature has done throughout the book and why he was created. First of all, the reason the creature was created was for Victor to test if it was possible to bring the dead back to life in order to bring his mother back to life after her death.
...r and companion. “I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct” (Shelley 166). The burning guilt and remorse the monster experiences here show that he is as human as any of the characters in the novel, perhaps the most human of all.
Frankenstein is a book about the creature and the creator’s adventure and how they both experienced misery in a different, yet similar ways. An isolated creature wishing to have a female companion and a creator with a satisfying and pleasant childhood. Yet, they both possessed something that connects them together. Although people may argue that Victor Frankenstein is different from the creature, he is ultimately very similar to the creature because they are both romantic, played god, and sought revenge by the end of the book.
Monsters can come in various physical forms, but all monsters share the same evil mentality. A Monster is a being that harms and puts fear within people. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a prime example of how appearance does not determine whether a creature is a monster or not. In the story, Victor Frankenstein tries to change nature by creating a super human being. The being appears to be a monster. Victor becomes so obsessed with his creation and then rejects it. Victor is the real monster because of his desire for power, lack of respect for nature, and his stubbornness.
The creature in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, is trying to fit into the human community, but is neglected and rejected by society solely on his physical appearance, deformity. “The demon is (sub) human consciousness-in-the-making, naturally benevolent as Milton’s Satan is not, and received with horror and contempt solely because of his physical appearance” (Oates 32). Abandoned by his creator, Victor Frankenstein, the creature ventures off on his own, and shows through experiences that indeed he is benevolent. However, his benevolence soon turns into vengeance, as he is constantly mistreated by the human race; the creature commits heinous acts. I disagree with Lawrence Lipking’s statement that “the novel is ambiguous on whether we
The creature is born as a product of Victor Frankenstein’s insatiable thirst for knowledge. Victor yearns to elicit life out of nothing, and the monster that results from his experimentation represents the dangers of such ambition. The creature is both ugly and terrifying, and