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Frankenstein mary shelley character analysis
Frankenstein mary shelley character analysis
Mary shelley frankenstein literary analysis
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One’s own ambitions can create problems, especially when the person is focused on achieving a difficult goal. They become unaware of the possible consequences it can cause, and in the end, they might not be satisfied with what they receive in return. For people who have faced this issue could only wish to reverse their actions to the right path, but even if they did they still have to live with the faults they have created. They would wonder what they have done wrong to cause such a drawback and then realize they were not prepared for what was coming. One lady who has experienced the turmoil of her own wrongdoings was a romantic author, named Mary Shelley. In an attempt to achieve her goal for love, she realized she would rather accept the …show more content…
drawbacks it brought upon her family than face any more consequences of her desires that were set at risk. She could never escape the remorse she fabricated in times of writing her work, distracting her from moving on with life to a point where she wanted to get it out of her system. In her famous works, Mary Shelley incorporated her personal emotions of remorse and discernment from her experiences into her characters to show how one’s desires can lead to dreadful consequences. During the years Shelley wrote her stories, she was inspired by different events in her life even if they were involved with her undesirable consequences. Her personal problems began after she secretly eloped with the married Percy Shelley. Her father, William Godwin, was ashamed of her for this elopement because he disapproved marriage thinking it would create financial problems within the family, which actually happened (Pearce par. 6). He shunned her from her family and ordered them along with her friends and loving husband “to shut her out of their lives” (Richardson par. 9). Despite being treated as a burden, she still received love from Percy. Although, more trouble began to occur after the Shelleys found out Percy’s first wife, Harriet, committed suicide after his marriage to Mary (Lepine par. 9). The mourning continued after their first daughter died a few days after being “born prematurely” since there was no accurate medical treatment to support her life, which brought two more deaths of their children from severe illnesses (Richmond par. 4). Mary began to blame herself and her “transgressions” to be loved by Percy and believed her own affair with him brought the misfortunes among the families (Lepine par. 9). For a woman who “believed in universal love,” she was disappointed in not finding her own peace from society (Parminutuan par. 17). To get away from her remorse, she distracted herself with other events in her life to console herself. She had a “lifelong interest” in the new fields of science, but was concerned with the notion of bringing the dead back to life; a new discovery in the late eighteenth-century (Parminutuan par. 12). Ever since the discovery of galvanism presented by Italian anatomist Luigi Galvani, who was able to make lifeless limbs of a frog move by sending sparks in the “bioelectric forces” in its tissues, many scientists carried on with the research in the early nineteenth-century (Pamintuan par. 11). Scientists and professors have gone far as to see if they could bring deceased humans back to life that they actually hired “body snatchers” to dig up graves and retrieve parts for their research (Richardson par. 13). The research was for “medical students of London” to observe and learn how the human body functioned, though, the possibilities were endless to them (Richardson par. 13). Mary’s familiarity with this new discovery made her have weary thoughts of the deaths of her children that she dreamt of bringing her first daughter back to life. After the child’s death, Mary had a dream where she “rubbed it before the fire, and it lived” (Richmond par. 4). This dream gave her some kind of urge to “defy death and magically restore her child’s life rather than tragically losing it,” but alas, it was impossible (Bulkeley par. 3). Of course, she knew it would be ridiculous to permanently resurrect a soul back to life since she found this discovery ludicrous anyways. She did not dare to see the “optimism” scientists had in attempting to make “immortality” possible turn into a problem in society (Pamintuan par. 14). The possibility was already seen as an “abomination” by the majority of people (Transhumanism par. 2). From her own lesson of not pursuing difficult goals, she wanted to set the same lesson on society with her works by using “science as a metaphor for any kind of irresponsible action” she was aware of that would bring conflicts to the community, which was seen in the scientific references in her stories, Frankenstein and “The Mortal Immortal” (Pamintuan par. 15). Her idea began with her Frankenstein novel after entering a “ghost story” competition in 1816, thinking such a horrific tale will persuade people to have second thoughts before pursuing their actions to bring the dead to life (Richardson par. 8). Although, while writing her famous pieces in times of her depression and guilt, she mainly connected her issues with her characters since her style dealt with the “sensitivities” and emotional dialogue in “human interactions” (Richmond par. 8). She even used this style to describe her own remorse in her poem, The Choice, after facing her husband’s sudden death at sea in 1822 that ended her longing love. The emotions she put in her writing created a pitiful tone in her works to draw the readers’ attention and understand the pains these consequences brought her and her characters. Mary’s characters faced rejection as she did, and she established to connect her issues to their rejection brought by their wants of love.
As seen from the creature’s perspective in Frankenstein, he realized his longing for love would never be accepted by mankind because of his distorted personal traits, and he could never seek peace after that which made him think that “all joy was but a mockery” and he “was not made for the enjoyment of pleasure” (Shelley Frankenstein 128). After being abandoned by his creator, Frankenstein, the creature found out in his journey alone that every being’s purpose was to find love or a group that will establish relationships with one another. He wondered when his love will ever come, but he was only beaten down by insults, fear, and neglect since he was a monster to anyone he encountered. Not only that, but the creature was even rejected by his creator for his “demand for a community” that will accept him, such as his own wife who would love him (Reese 50). With this, the creator did not want anything to deal with the creature to avoid the trouble he could cause that will make society blame Frankenstein for bringing such a hazardous being to town. The creature being shut away by his own creator and society for wanting to be accepted initiates the same conflict with Mary being forbidden by her father and family for loving her husband. She found herself as the monster from her emotional approach as she was treated like a burden for wanting …show more content…
something as simple as love, but something no one believed will be acceptable but cause trouble. For this, she established the negative parent-child relationship between the creature and creator to show the “denial” she and her creature received by those they knew dearly (Schmid par. 2). Mary and her characters try to reach their desires, but in their stubborn pursuits, they were accused of the troubles their goals could cause, in which they did. After refusing to give up their desires and attempting to get their love, Mary and her characters’ desires were what caused the misfortunes they were warned would happen, which brought remorse into their lives.
In “The Mortal Immortal” Winzy realized his goal to have immortality to earn love only led to his isolation in society, leaving him not cherishing love but facing the death of his lover, Bertha. from old age. He then faced his never-ending life with “empty” “enjoyments” with no “hope of death” (Shelley “The Mortal Immortal” par. 49). Winzy was warned by a philosopher, Cornelius Agrippa, about the elixir’s side effects of eternal life, but the stubborn scholar was too focused on this key antidote that he found was a symbol of love; part of the fact that Agrippa mentioned the elixir’s specialty as “a cure for love” by preserving one’s life (Shelley “The Mortal Immortal” par. 32). Winzy thought he could receive immortality just to get Bertha’s acceptance in their love, but the side effects only made his lover and society scoff at his gift, which he regretted in his lonely life. Just like how Mary refused to let her love be turned down even though it brought issues to the family, such as the financial issues her father expected would happen and the deaths of her loved ones, she ended up facing her own loneliness. Mary and her characters suffered the consequence of not receiving the love they longed to have, and this resulted with them blaming their selfish needs and
stubborn actions for making them face this result, which they later accepted. In the end, with no use for fixing or turning their problems around, Mary and her characters all accepted their consequences. Similar to how her creature and Winzy continued their isolated lives alone in remorse, she herself wrote the pains of living by herself after her husband’s death in The Choice. She decided to accept her fate even if she were to live on with her “heart” feeling like it was “stabbed” (Shelley The Choice line 181). Since Mary could only live her life in guilt and remorse after losing her loved ones in the past, she figured she would not be given the chance to love again. She knew she had to deal with her misfortunes her love caused in her family even if her sustained passion gave her depression. Along with how much she cherished her affection with Percy, she was brought to dissatisfaction after losing him, realizing all the company she adored was forever taken away from her. This consequence reminded her of her self-blame for the marriage that encouraged her to endorse her love that led to her consequences. For this, she finally learned her lesson of not pursuing any loving ambitions that were risky. Mary Shelley’s characters and her experiences gave examples on how consequences can be brought upon by choosing to accomplish difficult goals. Based on her many attempts to be loved with no appeasement in return, Mary suffered her own undesirable consequences in her family, who decided not to be there to console her from her problems. She could not take any more remorse and shame so she put these emotions into the personalities of her characters who faced their issues in thriving to seek their own love and peace. Mary Shelley’s main purpose for this idea was to obviously teach society not to achieve treacherous goals they had in mind, such as making unnatural science possible, for the discoveries of galvanism tested on the dead to commence immortality did not seem like a good idea to her. Otherwise, the people too will face desolation if their difficult goals were not prepared to enact. To avoid this, her works taught her readers to not become obsessed with a goal in general and to think through their ambitions before taking chances.
In Lisa Nocks article appropriately titled “Frankenstein, in a better light,” she takes us through a view of the characters in the eyes of the author Mary Shelly. The name Frankenstein conjures up feeling of monsters and horror however, the monster could be a metaphor for the time period of which the book was written according to Nocks. The article implies that the book was geared more towards science because scientific treatises were popular readings among the educated classes, of which Shelley was a member of. Shelley, whose father was wealthy and had an extensive library, was encouraged to self-educate, which gave her knowledge of contemporary science and philosophy, which also influenced Frankenstein as well as circumstances of her life.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a Complex Character "Frankenstein" is a gothic horror novel which was written by Mary Shelly in 1818. It was inspired by a biological scientist named "Luigi Galvani". He had experimented with electricity and deceased frogs, and discovered that a charge passing through a inanimate frog's body will generate muscle spasms throughout its body. Frankenstein is about a man on a pursuit to create a perfect being, an "angel" however his experiment fails and his creation becomes an atrocity compared to an "angel". The creature is created using Luigi Galvani experiments of electricity and dead corpses of criminals, stitched together to form this creature.
As Frankenstein is enroute to his pursuit of gaining more knowledge, he states, “I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed” (Shelley 41). Frankenstein’s decision in allowing his intellectual ambitions to overpower everything else in his life leads him to be blinded to the dangers of creating life. He isolates himself from his society when creating the monster, letting himself be immersed in his creation while being driven by his passions, allowing nobody to be near him. The fact that he allows this creation of a monster to consume his total being reveals how blinded he is to the immorality of stepping outside the boundaries of science and defying nature. His goal in striving to achieve what wants to in placing man over nature makes him lose his sense of self as all he is focused on is the final product of his creation. He starts to realize his own faults as after he has created the monster, he becomes very ill and states, “The form of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was forever before my eyes, and I raved incessantly concerning him” (48). His impulsive decision to make the monster leads him to abhorring it as it does not turn out to be what he has expected. Because he chooses to isolate himself in creating the
Frankenstein explains that, as the monster sees the being that Frankenstein is creatingThe monster looks at the new creature with a smile because he knows that this thing will eventually become his companion. Once she is created, the monster will finally be able to reach a form of happiness and will no longer have to live in complete solitude. However, when Frankenstein destroys this half-finished creature, the monster exclaims, Frankenstein has extinguished the monster’s hope of companionship, so the monster vows to destroy Frankenstein’s life. He no longer has anything to live for, so the monster’s only motivation in life becomes revenge against his creator. This quote from Shelly’s book shows how much the monster valued companionship and how much all other beings value it to. Frankenstein feels that he has nothing left to live for when the monster kills his loved ones. He explains that while his companions are dead and he is still alive, Frankenstein has no reason to live, because his life is meaningless without his friends and family that were killed by the
Victor Frankenstein is a complex character that we have come to learn more about while reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. He is a man that seems to have this fervent desire to do what suits him best without regard to what others may think. Victor’s brother William has been murdered and a childhood friend is to pay the price of his death. After sighting what is assumed as the creature created by Victor, Victor is panged with guilt that these events are his fault. If he is correct, then he would be justified in feeling this way because Victor is selfish, stubborn, and lacks compassion for others around him. Victors actions all lead up to the demise of William and Justine.
I will not hear you. There can be no communicate between you and me; we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in which one must fall” (68). At this point in the novel, I sympathize with the monster even though he has become a terrible person. As his creator, Victor Frankenstein should have cared for the monster despite his disgusting appearance, but Victor ran away from his responsibilities toward creature, he did not give the creature what he wanted in his life, because he was feared of being killed by the creature. Frankenstein made the creature to murder the living humans, because the creature was very isolated and he did not had no one to talk to:” I was benevolent; my soul glow with love and humanity: but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing?” (68). If Frankenstein would have guided and nurtured the creature then the creature would have never sought revenge on Frankenstein and his family: I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend” (68). The creature demonstrated his true personality, due to the abandonation of his creator. However, the creature perceive Frankenstein of being the omnipotent God: “Remember, that I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou divest from joy for no misdeed” (68). Which demonstrates the melancholy part of the creature that was filled with loneliness and
Mary Shelley, the renowned author of Frankenstein, explores the consequences of man and monster chasing ambition blindly. Victor Frankenstein discovered the secret that allowed him to create life. His understanding of how bodies operated and the science of human anatomy enabled him to make this discovery and apply it to the creation of his monster. Walton wished to sail to the arctic because no sailor has ever reached it. The monster was created against his will, his ambition was to avenge his creation as a hideous outcast. These three characters were all driven by the same blind ambition.
He never had the choice if his creator was going to abandon him because of his outward ugliness. Paula R. Feldman recognizes this forced isolation, saying, “Frankenstein is accepted by society but chooses isolation, his Creature is an outcast but yearns for companionship… formed only by the cruelty and neglect of society” (Feldman 69). The creature is an outlier of society, but never by choice, and, unlike his creator, who chooses to separate himself from everything in his life, the monster did not have the opportunity to experience life before being forced into solitude. The creature is often is “confined within a state of lonely and insuperable incommunicability” (Schmid 19). The creature wants nothing more than to be accepted by society, and does not receive the affection and relationships that a child should be provided with. He lost the connection with his father right from creation, but never could truly understand why he was abandoned. The creature realizes he will never be accepted by mankind, and wants Victor to make him a companion. He swears revenge on Victor, and displays his disdain for his forced isolation by killing anyone who was close to Victor, including Elizabeth. The acts of violence committed by the monster are a direct effect of having no true relationships, considering that if he had these, he would better understand human interaction, and would not have acted out against Victor in
In any novel the author is free to create and shape their characters in whatever way they see fit. In Frankenstein, Shelley does an excellent job of shaping her characters, be it however minute their part in the story, so that the reader gets a clear picture of Shelley's creations. It seems that each character in Shelley's Frankenstein is created by Shelley to give the reader a certain impression of the character. By doing this Shelley creates the characters the way she wants us to see them. She tells us certain things about them and gives them certain traits so that they will fit into the story the way she wants them to. In particular I will examine the characters of the monster, Elizabeth, and old man De Lacey.
People say that “through hard work and determination, dreams will come true” and this does not always seem to be the case. Hard work and determination, or ambition for short, does lead to the accomplishments of dreams, but sometimes ends up ruining relationships as seen in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. The novel, originally written in 1818, depicts a story about a young ambitious scientist-by the name of Victor Frankenstein-who attempts at creating life. Throughout the story, Victor works tirelessly to accomplish this feat---and finally does succeed in doing so. This creation, though, does not make Victor any happier than he previously was--in fact, it makes him more depressed. From his lab emerges a monster, a being “so hideous” that even he flees from it in disgust (Shelley, 140). Fierce ambition mixed with pride drives Victor to create the monster, and this ultimately makes him neglect the various aspects of his life. This ambitious quality does not just belong to Victor, but to many more. Because he represents a creator, Victor passes down this quality-not always resulting in good things-to his creation; in a sense, he reaps what he sows. Without this “heedless ambition”, there would have existed a lighter,
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley portrays an individual in a unique situation trying to overcome daily interactions while being faced with inconceivable misfortunes. Created by Victor Frankenstein, who set out on a journey to bring life to scrapped pieces of waste, he was then abandoned and left to fend for himself in a world he was abruptly brought into. After being abandoned by his creator for his less than appealing looks, this then sparked his inevitable desire for revenge. Eventually leading to the destruction of those associated with his creator. Knowing that he will never fit in, the monster began to act out in hopes of getting back at his creator for what he did. His vulnerability due to missing guidance and parental figures in his beginning stages of life contributed to his behavior. The books and article Family Crisis and Children’s Therapy Groups written by Gianetti, Audoin, and Uzé, Victim Of Romance: The Life And Death Of Fanny Godwin by Maurice Hindle, and Social Behavior and Personality by Lubomir Lamy, Jacques Fishcher-Lokou, and Nicolas Gueguen support why the monster acts the way he does. The monster’s behavior stems from Victor’s actions at the beginning of his life and therefore is not to blame. The creature in Frankenstein is deserving of sympathy even though he committed those murders because the lack of parental guidance, lack of family, and lack of someone to love led him to that. All in all his actions were not malicious, but only retaliation for what he had been put through.
The key figure in the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, is a monster who “was benevolent and good; [but] misery made [him] a fiend” (Shelley 84). The monster is originally created to possess love, kindness, and other human characteristics, but after years of solitude due to his inhuman ugliness, his life is left in ruins. Humans’ normal response to being alone or feeling like no one cares about them, is to curse others and the world. The monster has the same reaction after he is physically and emotionally rejected by society and his creator. Frankenstein explores the journey of a monster and how he deals with his human emotions when he is let out into the world to fend for himself. The monster’s response to his isolation from society is
From the monster’s point of view, we see how the monster does not understand why he is treated the way he is. He does not understand why he was created or even who his creator was: “And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely Ignorant; but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endowed with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome”(Shelley, 96). The hideous figure that the monster describes is the result of the rushed work Frankenstein did. Collecting dead parts of not only humans but animals as well. The selfishness in pursuing further knowledge and to demonstrate this knowledge did not let Frankenstein see that this creation was doomed. I go as far as to say that Frankenstein’s selfishness did not allowed him to think about how things were going to change once the creature came to life. He was too absorbed in pursuing the impossible, pursuing what no other human being had ever done. The way he brought the creature into life was unnatural. There is nothing natural about this creation therefore he does not have the instinct to love what he had brought into
After hearing the monster’s side of the story Frankenstein started to show some compassion for the being and agreed to it’s desire for a mate. Now that Frankenstein has learned the full story of his creation he feels the need to take responsibility for it now with the line, “did [he] not as his maker owe him all portions of happiness” (Shelley 125), less the monster start to attack humanity out of
The most prevalent theme in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is that of obsession. Throughout the novel there are constant reminders of the struggles that Victor Frankenstein and his monster have endured. Many of their problems are brought upon by themselves by an obsessive drive for knowledge, secrecy, fear, and ultimately revenge.