Tabula Rasa Character Analysis

When babies are born, the first thing they comprehend is the ability to breathe; they do not understand their name, how to communicate, or right from wrong, they are a blank slate which they then learn new information everyday through their guidance and experiences, this concept is called Tabula Rasa. Tabula Rasa was developed by the philosopher John Locke, he wrote the book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding which outlined his viewpoints on how the human mind operates. From Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein, we see that people begin as blank slates and develop themselves through experiences, because they don’t have an opinion about things to give them emotion, they haven’t experienced anything good or bad, and they have no upbringing

by any older people.
When babies are born, they don’t yet have preconceived thoughts concerning how they should react to certain situations, they react by pure instinct of the little they have already observed, these thoughts come later after they have had the action repeated enough to find out if they enjoy or dislike it.

In Mary Shelly’s book, Frankenstein when the creature was first created, Victor spoke that, “His jaws opened, he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled on his cheeks”(Shelly 48). When the creature was created, he had no hatred to anyone, when he came to see his creator he tried to communicate with him and grinned as a sign of compassion but when Victor shuns him away he then begins to feel his animosity towards the human race. As he began to be rejected more and more he began to turn into an uneducated angry being, the argument could have been made that if Victor would have sat down and educated his creature and showed compassion that the creature may have turned out just a nice and slightly abnormal being. John Locke formed the idea of Tabula Rasa, which is the idea that at birth the mind is a blank slate, “Locke argued that people acquire knowledge from the information about the objects in the world that our senses bring. People begin with simple ideas and then combine them into more complex ones”(age-of-the-sage 1). The blank slate theory makes great sense, people often make the counter-argument that kids are always like their parents but that simply

isn’t true; they resemble their parents because they are raised by them, however, people who don’t grow up with their parents may not resemble them in personality at all. When kids are being molded by their guiding figures they first learn simple things, such as how to communicate and the difference between right and wrong, from these things they use their experiences to create their personality. When beings are born, they have no opinion about the world or the people in it or even themselves yet, so it is impractical to believe that someone who doesn’t even know how to walk on their own two feet yet can have a vast knowledge that comprises a human’s personality.
In most experiences, the outcome of the event whether good or bad tends to shape people’s views on that activity, so as babies gain experience they would therefore build their personality supporting the blank slate theory. It has been said that, “From experience: in that, all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself”(Hewett 1). This quote derived from John Locke’s writing explains that we aren’t born with knowledge but rather from birth we begin to soak up mass amounts of information like a little intellectual sponge. One example to look at is that babies aren’t born knowing how to speak english, that is an acquired skill that they learn from the repeated experience of people talking around them, the same way the creature learned to speak, he didn’t know how until observing the family for a long time. Locke later elaborates that, “We are born with a variety of faculties that enable us to receive and process information and to manipulate it once we have it, but what we don’t have is innate knowledge or ideas”(Hewett 1). Locke means that while we are born with the capability to process information we are not born with the information itself. The human brain is split into many sections or regions each responsible for different things such as emotion, reaction, and storage of memories, there is no region where there are preset personality traits. In sum, the human brain has the capability to take what it sees like frequently said words and incorporate it into knowledge that it can use later, but it is not born with a set personality for the being, that is developed through the experiences it intakes.
Throughout our whole life we have teachers, people to give us their experience and knowledge of things they know, we don’t have that knowledge prior to learning it which is why we need our elders to give us experience; our first teachers are our parents which mold us into the people we are today. Locke discussed how the human mind cannot comprehend an idea until someone has put the idea in their head saying, “To the contrary that an idea cannot be said to be ‘in the mind’ until one is conscious of it”(Britannica: John Locke 1). Parents raise children by passing down what they have learned through their experiences in life, therefore, the parents and teachers experiences raise the children by passing the knowledge to them. The human mind according to Locke is equivalent to a sponge, it can soak up information but can’t clean anything from straight out of the package. Locke compares the mind to paper saying, “the human mind before ideas have been imprinted on it by the reaction of the senses to the external world of objects”(Britannica: Tabula 1). Suppose that experience is an english teacher and we are the students writing a paper, as the teacher teaches us more about grammar techniques and vocabulary we begin to assemble a more thorough and superior paper. The whole schooling system is proof that the mind that is a blank slate, if people were born with preconceived knowledge or personality there would be no point for schooling to give people knowledge to figure out who they are and who they want to be. In sum, we need the upbringing of older figures whether they are teachers, parents, or coaches because a mind is a blank slate which has not yet absorbed the experience and ideas which they are bestowing upon them.
In close, the human mind is a blank slate, when babies are born, they have no opinion about the environment around them, they have no experience, and have not been brought up by any elders.

Humans are experience based creatures, we learn from our mistakes, kids are not born with their knowledge. Blank slate, means that people can be whatever they want to be, they have no

destinies.