Psychological Criticism In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

In Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein, a young scientist planned to make that creature that is for the betterment of humankind. Nevertheless, Frankenstein actually wanted to go beyond of the limitations in the scientific field and act as a god. This stems from Frankenstein's previous educational experience of learning about life or death in his science classes, thus leading him take upon a challenge and create life out of inanimate objects. The creature was unethically created and abandoned due to his features, thus leading him to be shunned for his appearance. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Frankenstein’s Creature serves as an allegory for the discovery of our fear of the unknown. Literature allows a reader the space

Psychological criticism is analyzing the state of mind of the characters and why characters are motivated to do what they do. We can better understand the reasons for the harmful actions of the Creature through this lens because the psychological lens helps us determine what were the roots based on his motivation. For example, when the creature unintentionally kills Victor Frankenstein’s brother, William, after realizing he was his creator's brother, as a form of revenge of the one who abandoned him. The creature did not intend on killing, only on hurting William as an attempt of revenge. Victor was the root of his motives, The creature was feeling as if his creator did not care for him, he wanted to hurt his creator as the creator did to him by leaving him alone. From this situation, we could see his motives on one of his harmful acts. Mary Shelley is demonstrating the root of the motives of the creature as he kills certain people. Additionally, the psychological lens can also best be understood as an analysis of the creature's actions. This lens is significant because it allows us to better think about the state of mind of the Creature. For example, when the creature reconsiders his existence in the world when he states, “ What did this mean? Who was I?...” (Frankenstein 15). The creature if trying to find out why he is even alive, his purpose, his destination. He feels as

This is important because it displays the similarity of the creature and the marginalized group. What we learn about African Americans is that they are treated differently and feared because of their skin color. In the article Negro Phobia Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Americans fear of Black People, the treatment of black people and the creature in Frankenstein will be compared. For instance, in the article, the author Brandon Hill, described a story told to him by a person who visited a penitentiary that had a musical performance and through the description of the story he noticed how the person spoke about the characters in it, stating after, “This stream of modifiers - large, beautiful, intimidating- is normally reserved for majestic, predatory bees like tigers, bears, or dragons. It describes something both appealing and appalling, but not typically a human.” This conveying an idea that black people are like animals, described as animals which as typically feared such as how the creature was feared. His appearance was feared because he was out of the ordinary however black people are also feared and are described with words used for things out of the ordinary. The marginalized group essentially go through the same problem the creature did, people used these words