Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a Tale of a Struggle Between Good and Evil

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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a Tale of a Struggle Between Good and Evil

Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein can be conceived as an anomaly for

many things with its many underlying themes but most predominantly it

is a power struggle between good and evil. The main character named

Frankenstein develops a lust for knowledge early on in the novel and

although this has its circumstances it is seen as an evil obligation.

Mary Shelley sees Frankenstein's great ambition to create this monster

as evil. This creation runs amuck and causes evil in what Mary Shelley

sees as a good world. Due to this the novel is a case of the clichéd

good versus evil case.

As the novel runs its course you become aware that Mary Shelley is

warning the reader about playing God and attaining more knowledge then

should be sought by mortal men. The reader realizes that Frankenstein

is trying to do this near the beginning of the novel when he writes

"More, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked,

I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the

world the deepest mysteries of creation."

What Mary Shelley sees as evil in the novel is the extremely excessive

manor that Frankenstein develops in the willingness to do anything to

achieve his goal. This is not a concept unique to Mary Shelley's

novel. Frankenstein plays God at the beginning of the novel by

creating the "wretch". This can be likened to Prometheus's creation of

a human from clay. When he created this man he was punished by the

Gods through physical torture. Frankenstein was punished although in a

different form. This was through grievances of his family and frie...

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... Up to a point the novel is a battle between

good and evil. This can be contradicted though by the only way to kill

an evil is to commit an evil. This irony means that it was more of a

clash between evil and evil. If the reader brings away anything from

the book it will be the message that Mary Shelley has been putting

through all along. She emphasizes the fact that it is wrong to play

God.

This message stays with the reader after the novel. It can be an

important message for us today in that it tells us not to do anything

that God did not intend us to do. A relevant example of this today

would be cloning of animals or G M crops. This in a way is going

against what we should be allowed to do and like Frankenstein we are

becoming too ambitious. The novel is an excellent reminder of the

consequences of playing God.

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