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Why family values are important
Frankenstein and family essay
Frankenstein and family essay
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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the Repercussions of Overindulging Children
Mary Shelley teaches us all well the long range effects of spoiling a child to the extreme in her novel Frankenstein. Set in the mid-19th century, the novel details the life of Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created. However, it also serves as a model of the ultimate repercussions of overindulging children. This is an issue too few parents bother with today. As their own parents did their best to provide well and ensure a better life for them, today's parents are of same mind, regardless if they had a "lacking" childhood or not. Consequently, their own children are given the best clothes and toys, and are sent to the best daycare centers, pre-schools, schools and colleges. Like Victor, many grow into self-centered,self-serving adults. Victor, as the first child, spent the first years of his life as an only child,born into an aristocratic family and showered with affection."I remained for several years their only child ... [T]hey [his parents] seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of affection from a very mine of love to bestow ... upon me" (Shelley 16).
He is a boy who wanted for nothing, and who was wholly and completely indulged, allowed to do as he pleased. "[T]hey [his parents] were not tyrants to rule our lot according to their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed" (Shelley 19). Victor is more than the apple of their eye; he is the center of their world. "I was their plaything and their idol ... whose future lot ... was in their hands ... as they fulfilled their duties towards me ... I was guided [by a belief] ... that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me ... I was their only care."(Shelley 16)
All of this, while seemingly idyllic, gave Victor a sense of godlike importance, "bestowed on them [his parents] by Heaven," (Shelley 16) like a gift from God. Everything in his life revolves around him, and the only thing that really matters in the world as he perceives it, is himself and his happiness. Even when his parents adopt a beautiful, young orphan girl, Elizabeth Lavenza,he interprets it as an action intended to entertain and satisfy him. His mother, Caroline, reinforces this belief when she announces, "I have a pretty present for my Victor"(Shelley 18), and he willingly accepts her as his new toy, " mine to protect love and cherish .
Shelley characterizes Victor in a way that he acts on his impulses and not with rationality. As a result, Victor does not take the time to teach or talk to his creation. This action leads to his downfall as his loved one’s are killed by the Creature taking revenge on Victor for leaving him to fend for himself. Victor’s actions have consequences, hence why all his loved one’s are murdered because of his instinct to leave out of fear and safety. Shelley proves that our id demands immediate gratification of needs and thus, is in control of our actions.
Crisman argues that Mary Shelley is constantly emphasizing the “emotion surrounding the parent-child relationship”. In Victor’s early life he feel...
Victor Frankenstein’s recollects his past before his mind in youth was plagued by his self destructive passions later on in his life. By reflecting on his past, he becomes keenly aware of the poor choices he has made which inevitably lead to the decimation of the innocence he used to possess in the past. The simile in this text compares the beginning of when he discovers his passions for natural philosophy, and his eventual demise caused by it, to the flow of a river which source was in the mountains. The serene nature of the mountain and river foreshadows the purity of Frankenstein’s being before the discovery of his passions, and the peak of that mountain symbolizes the height of this innocence. The many sources of water at the peak represents
A predominant theme in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is that of child-rearing and/or parenting techniques. Specifically, the novel presents a theory concerning the negative impact on children from the absence of nurturing and motherly love. To demonstrate this theory, Shelly focuses on Victor Frankenstein’s experimenting with nature, which results in the life of his creature, or “child”. Because Frankenstein is displeased with the appearance of his offspring, he abandons him and disclaims all of his “parental” responsibility. Frankenstein’s poor “mothering” and abandonment of his “child” leads to the creation’s inevitable evilness. Victor was not predestined to failure, nor was his creation innately depraved. Rather, it was Victor’s poor “parenting” of his progeny that lead to his creation’s thirst for vindication of his unjust life, in turn leading to the ruin of Victor’s life.
In William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, many of the poems correlate in numerous aspects. For example, The Chimney Sweeper is a key poem in both collections that portrays the soul of a child The Chimney Sweeper in Innocence vs. The Chimney Sweeper in Experience In William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, many of the poems correlate in numerous aspects. For example, The Chimney Sweeper is a key poem in both collections that portrays the soul of a child with both a naïve and experienced persona. Blake uses the aspects of religion, light versus dark imagery, and the usage of the chimney sweeper itself to convey the similarities and differences of the figure in both poems. The Chimney Sweeper is an excellent example of how William Blake incorporated religion into his poetic works.
In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein secretly creates a monster without considering the consequences. After the creation of the monster and throughout Victor’s life he and the monster suffer constantly. Because Victor keeps his monster a secret from his family, friends and society, he is alone and miserable. The monster is also alone and miserable because he is shunned by society due to his grotesque appearance.
As Victor Frankenstein recounts his informative tale to a seafaring Robert Walton, he makes it known that he was a child of nobility; however it is sadly transparent that, combined with insufficient parenting, Victor’s rare perspective on life pushes him towards a lifestyle of conditional love. Children are considered symbolic of innocence, but as a child Victor’s arrogance was fueled by his parents. With his family being “one of the most distinguished of the republic,”(Shelley 17), Victor’s parents saw him as their “plaything and their idol, and something better-their child, the innocent and helpless Creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me,”(19). “The Social Order vs. the Wretch: Mary Shelley's Contradictory-Mindedness in Frankenstein Sylvia Bowerbank.” Bowerbank, "The Social Order vs. the Wretch", knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/bower.html.
By definition, knowledge is the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association (Merriam-Webster.com). In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley considers knowledge as a “dangerous” factor. The danger of it is proved throughout the actions of the characters Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the creature. The characters all embody the theme of knowledge in different ways. Shelley supports her opinion about knowledge by using references from the Bible and Paradise Lost. She uses these references to show the relationship between God’s Adam and Frankenstein’s creature, and how nothing turns out as great as God’s creation. Mary Shelley’s goal is to teach a lesson on how destructive the desire for knowledge really is.
Victor expresses his solemn feelings about his mother’s death and sister sickness by creating a companion for himself. Victor’s mother is helping her daughter back to health after she contracts scarlet fever. The mother then gets the fever and eventually dies because of it. This partner Victor creates, turns out to be a monster on the outside that intimidates society, but means well on the inside. In this quote, Mary Shelley describes her perspective on the monster, QUOTE. Shelley talks about how the monster is learning from the family in the woods and shows how he learns to be part of a family and do chores such as stacking the firewood to help heat the house. He chooses to do this to give him the feeling of being part of a family; he cares about the family and treats them as if they were his own, but when the family walks in and Felix sees him with the father he attacks the monster. Felix attacks not because he is with the father and he doesn’t recognize him, but from the look of him he is intimidating and not “normal” looking so Felix jumps to the conclusion that he is inferior...
In one of the illustrations, the Little Black Boy is still black when he meets God even though in the poem he claims that color will no longer matter. The way that they are standing is very interesting too because the poem suggests that they will be equal, but the Little Black Boy is described as standing behind the child and in the picture, he is standing behind the white boy. This could be another example of Blake showing how innocent people and naïve people are close to the same thing. The boy thinks one way, but Blake is showing the reader the way things really are through his
William Blake was probably more concerned than any other major Romantic author with the process of publication and its implications for the interpretation of his artistic creations. He paid a price for this degree of control over the process of printing, however: Blake lived in poverty and artistic obscurity throughout his entire life. Later, when his poems began to be distributed among a wider audience, they were frequently shorn of their original contexts. For William Blake, there has been a trade-off between the size of the audience he has reached and the degree of control he exerted over the publication process.
Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and jealousy Satan wants humans to feel to lure them to Hell. The poems of experience reflect those feelings. This is illustrated by comparing and contrasting A Divine Image to a portion of The Divine Image.
“The Shepherd” is a very short two stanza poem in which Blake tells about a shepherd who stays with his flock morning and night praising them. The second stanza consists of the shepherd hearing the lamb’s innocent call and the ewe’s soft reply. The shepherd watches the lambs in peace and they know that he is not.
Similar to common nursery rhymes, Blake uses musical devices in both “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” which brings an awareness of potential evil and how it dominates over innocence by exercising specific language in both related poems. For example, Blake uses alliteration in “The Lamb” by repeating “Little Lamb” several times during the poem to grasp the reader’s attention. Along with alliteration, Blake’s “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” both capture the reader’s attention by using rhyme scheme. For example, Blake’s use of couplets in both of the related poems potentially brings an awareness of how evil dominates over innocence. Blake utilizes the couplet series in his poem “The Tyger” and proves his theme by comparing and contrasting the tyger and the lamb and even bravely asks if the same Creator who created the innocent little lamb also created the potentially evil tyger
Within Blake's work The Lamb starts off by asking a little lamb who had made thee. Asking how gave you life, and how had fed you. By asking these questions to the lamb the boy questions how a lamb came into existence in this realm. "Then the boy tells the lamb that he is called by thys name since he calls himself a lamb"(Foundation). Then after that the boy realizes that the lamb was created by God. As this is read a sense of a childlike innocence that the creator is a source of gentleness, selflessness, and love. This idea is expressed by the symbol of a lamb, for being the most gentle creation.