Tartuffe And Frankenstein Essay

1689 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The romanticism movement essay

The Cause of Evil
Literature is often used to convey messages to their audience, through art, play or poetry. Whether it is intentional or not, an author can not help to include some aspect of the political events that happened during that time period. Two movements discussed in this essay are Enlightenment (17th – 18th Century) and Romanticism (18th – 19th Century) and through literature, we come to acknowledge the presence and representation of evil and how they shape society. Enlightenment thinkers value reason, rationality and moderation, whereas Romanticism encouraged imagination, emotion and individual sensibility. Tartuffe by Moliere demonstrates all of the Enlightenment values in his play, whereas Frankenstein by Mary Shelley emphasizes emotion, passion and the natural world. This essay will explore ways in which human reason and society can be evil and deceiving; although some individuals may think that evil is instilled in us from the day we were born.
Evil has been exemplified in both Tartuffe and Frankenstein. Throughout the essay we will understand how each of the movements relate to each literary work. Religion played a big role during the Enlightenment. Tartuffe, written during that time, casts a shadow on religious virtue and religious hypocrisy. Moliere introduces several characters that display a strong sense of reason to overcome irrationality and at the end of the story he presents the King, which signifies restoration to aristocracy. Most notably, Cleante (Orgon’s brother in law) who highly demonstrates both reason and religion while explaining to Orgon that men like Tartuffe are “not so rare” in their display of virtue and that there might be other motives. Cleante tells Orgon that peopl...

... middle of paper ...

...these laws (Chaffee, 60). He believed that it was the environment that molds the mind. As we see in Tartuffe, Orgon is somewhat responsible the outcome of Tartuffe, had he not let Tartuffe into his family, Tartuffe would not have been able to take advantage of the situation.
Another philosopher during the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that people have their own modes of feelings and thinking, and this is because they grow according to nature’s plan, which urges them to develop difference capacities and modalities at different stage (Chaffee, 80). Rousseau’s thought can be found in both Victor and the Creature. Victor was naturally a good human whose obsession was driven to achieve the impossible. The Creature wanted love and companion, but he was shunned by all that he encountered and therefore developed a sense of hatred and vengeance.

Show More
Related

  • Tartuffe And Pangloss Literary Analysis

    1171 Words  | 3 Pages

    From the very beginning of Tartuffe, the reader learns that Tartuffe is held in great religious standing by Orgon’s mother:” Whatever he reproves deserves reproof. He’s out to save

    Read More

  • Romanticism And Industrialization

    1289 Words  | 3 Pages

    The second half of the Civilization II course showed us the radical changes from the Renaissance period to the Romantic era and further on. With works like Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground we move farther away from the religious views of the sixteenth century Europe and move toward a more open and industrialized world. With Romanticism the views of the Enlightenment are also changed. The Enlightenment was a time where reason and individualism were put forth whereas Romanticism was a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement. It originated in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th century and, it is due in part to the French Revolution which planted the grains needed for Romanticism to sprout and grow. Romanticism was the protest of the individual against the universal laws of classicism. It was also the protest of feeling against reason and perhaps more importantly the protest on the behalf of nature against the encroachments of industrialization (Barrett Chapter 6). However, it is not because a protest against reason is occurring that faith is taken away as seen in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. From the Romantic era and Industrialization, the world then witnessed World War I and finally, the course touched upon Samuel Beckett’s Endgame which shows the changes that occurred in daily life post-war. Within a short amount of time the views of mankind and its beliefs drastically changed. It also seems that all that was studied from the Enlightenment onwards are pieces of a very big puzzle. Each piece fits snuggly and creates one big picture that ends with Beckett’s Endgame.

    Read More

  • Essay on Morality in Dante’s Inferno, Hamlet, The Trial, and Joyce’s The Dead

    2804 Words  | 6 Pages

    Everyone remembers the nasty villains that terrorize the happy people in fairy tales. Indeed, many of these fairy tales are defined by their clearly defined good and bad archetypes, using clichéd physical stereotypes. What is noteworthy is that these fairy tales are predominately either old themselves or based on stories of antiquity. Modern stories and epics do not offer these clear definitions; they force the reader to continually redefine the definitions of morality to the hero that is not fully good and the villain that is not so despicable. From Dante’s Inferno, through the winding mental visions in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, spiraling through the labyrinth in Kafka’s The Trial, and culminating in Joyce’s abstract realization of morality in “The Dead,” authors grapple with this development. In the literary progression to the modern world, the increasing abstraction of evil from its classic archetype to a foreign, supernatural entity without bounds or cure is strongly suggestive of the pugnacious assault on individualism in the face of literature’s dualistic, thematically oligopolistic heritage.

    Read More

  • A Comparison Of Civilism In Frankenstein And Mary Shelley's Titus Andronicus

    1037 Words  | 3 Pages

    The presence of science and power, and seemingly of civility, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus are masking the underlying trait of barbarism. Victor and Titus are both characterized as well to do and powerful men in their own societies, however they break several norms of civilization thus becoming barbaric in nature. These man are disruptive of nature and of the social order, therefore creating a blatant juxtaposition of civility and barbarism which shapes the course of each work of literature.

    Read More

  • Frankenstein and Gulliver’s Travels Essay

    806 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mary Shelley and Jonathan Swift were completely us”(Swift, 73). Swift doesn’t think highly of chambermaids. Swift in general portrays females, even his wife, in a rather unjust way. The girls of Brobdingnag “would strip themselves to the skin, and put on their smocks in my presence, while I was placed on their toilet directly before their naked bodies, which, I am sure, to me was very far from being a tempting sight, or from giving me any other emotions than those of horror and disgust.”(Swift 133) Gulliver’s thoughts clearly address the youth of Swift’s time. Contrary to Swift’s writing, Shelly’s Frankenstein portrays females in an esteemed fashion. Females play active roles in Frankenstein, whether to Victor or to Felix. In fact, women help Victor develop in the reader’s eyes which is impossible to notice unless they are mentioned. Elizabeth is the guiding light of Victor, before and after his maddening state of creation. When Victor is re-united with Elizabeth he describes her in romantic fashion, “time had since I last beheld her; it had endowed her with loveliness surpassing the beauty of her childish years.” (Shelly 67) This is completely opposite to Gulliver. Whether it be his mom, Justine, or Elizabeth; Victor has positive encounters with females. It can also be noted that the Frankenstein monster “demand[s] a creature of another sex… and it shall content me” (Shelly 135). This request that the monster asks for is crucial as it shows the necessary interactions between males and females that Shelly, not Swift, shows.

    Read More

  • Selfish Ambition Frankenstein

    1510 Words  | 4 Pages

    ... good, but can be turned to evil by society’s narrow-minded view of what is normal, and the corruption of the mind through knowledge and education. The repercussions of Victor’s and others alienation of the creature turned a caring individual to an evil one. Shelley succeeds in bringing Rousseau's theory to life, that one is born good, but he can be turned to evil through civilization and education. This story still has a great meaning for us today. Millions of people are outcast by society, not only because of physical appearance, but also because of sexual orientation, social status, and religion. Once people quit looking so narrow-mindedly at one another, the world will be a much better place, and Frankenstein's "monster" will rest in peace!

    Read More

  • Compassion And Sympathy For The Creature In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    882 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who decides to play God and creates his own human unorthodoxly. Unfortunately, Frankenstein rejects his creation and forces it to live in fear and obliviousness of the world. Throughout the book, the reader is able to witness the character development within the Creature; he grows from a benevolent and benign man to a spiteful and ravenous murderer. In spite of this, I have great compassion and sympathy for the Creature. In order to understand this reasoning, we must take three factors into consideration. Firstly, we have the realize the aspects that drove the Creature into becoming an angry person. Second, we must acknowledge how human nature is. Lastly, we must consider who is to be blamed for the Creature’s actions.

    Read More

  • Essay On Nature In Frankenstein

    1744 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout history, many have debated whether an individual's behavior is a result of DNA inheritance or developed through the environment they have grown to experience. One side believes that an individual inherits their behavior through nature which is DNA just like how it determines the child’s eye color, type of hair and the possibility of diseases. The other side argued behavior is developed through the environment in which they have experienced through the years. John Locke explains that at birth, a child is born with a blank slate and as they grow their mind is filled with experiences. The question arises whether the creatures’ horrendous behavior was a result being born a monster or his experience of being abandoned constantly.

    Read More

  • Frankenstein Out of Class Essay

    712 Words  | 2 Pages

    Critic Northrop Frye says, “Tragic heroes tower as the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, the great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divine lightning”. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein greatly exhibits the theme of the consequence of knowledge and irresponsibility among others through its tragic hero, Victor Frankenstein. Northrop Frye’s quote is certainly true when looking at Frankenstein’s situation. Victor is a victim of his divine lightning, and ultimately causes much trouble for himself; however, Victor also serves as the tragic hero in the lives of the monster, his family, and his friends.

    Read More

  • Enlightenment and Tartuffe

    446 Words  | 1 Pages

    Another challenge is to superstition, deception, and oppressive traditions. Tartuffe is a character that is related to the church and yet is a very deceptive, hypocritical character. He is able to con Orgon into letting him into his home. Furthermore, Orgon is deceived into disinheriting his own son and leaving all the inheritances to Tartuffe. Orgon is an example of the oppressive person who tries to maintain complete control.

    Read More

  • Theodicy

    682 Words  | 2 Pages

    Theodicy, when it is stripped down to its base, is the human response to the question of the reasons a good God would permit the manifestation of evil. From the 1700s to the early 19th century, literary works of art in the form of novels have attempted to provide an answer to the complexity. With the turn of each century authors produced new and different rationales and viable solutions to the problem of evil. Two authors in particular, Rousseau and Flaubert attempted to tackle this topic in their renowned works of literature. Many cultural shifts were present at and during the time of these works, which had a significant impact on the theories and presentation within them.

    Read More

  • Frankenstein And A Modest Proposal Essay

    1106 Words  | 3 Pages

    The year is 1729, a time which was very dark in Ireland. Jonathan Swift writes about how everyone but the poor were suffering in his writing, “A Modest Proposal”. He writes about this dark time and gives crazy yet smart ideas. Mary Shelley’s, “Frankenstein” also has this foreboding tone. Both writings are dark and have the reader wanting to know what will be said next.

    Read More

  • Free Essays on Frankenstein: The Creature as a Foil to Frankenstein

    2166 Words  | 5 Pages

    Frankenstein, speaking of himself as a young man in his father’s home, points out that he is unlike Elizabeth, who would rather follow “the aerial creations of the poets”. Instead he pursues knowledge of the “world” though investigation. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that the meaning of the word “world” is for Frankenstein, very much biased or limited. He thirsts for knowledge of the tangible world and if he perceives an idea to be as yet unrealised in the material world, he then attempts to work on the idea in order to give it, as it were, a worldly existence. Hence, he creates the creature that he rejects because its worldly form did not reflect the glory and magnificence of his original idea. Thrown, unaided and ignorant, into the world, the creature begins his own journey into the discovery of the strange and hidden meanings encoded in human language and society. In this essay, I will discuss how the creature can be regarded as a foil to Frankenstein through an examination of the schooling, formal and informal, that both of them go through. In some ways, the creature’s gain in knowledge can be seen to parallel Frankenstein’s, such as, when the creature begins to learn from books. Yet, in other ways, their experiences differ greatly, and one of the factors that contribute to these differences is a structured and systematic method of learning, based on philosophical tenets, that is available to Frankenstein but not to the creature.

    Read More

  • Orgon's Obsession in Tartuffe by Moliere

    356 Words  | 1 Pages

    In Moliere's comedy, Tartuffe, the main focus of the play is not of Tartuffe, but of Orgon's blind infatuation with Tartuffe. It just so happens that the title character is the villain, rather than the hero. Orgon is Moliere's representation of how a man can be so blind in his devotion to a belief that he cannot make accurate judgment as to the sincerity of others who would use that belief to deceive him. Tartuffe easily achieves total power over Orgon's actions because of his gullibility. However, as the play progresses, Orgon's view of Tartuffe changes and results in Tartuffe's removal.

    Read More

  • Frankenstein Critical Analysis Essay

    735 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mary Shelley in her book Frankenstein addresses numerous themes relevant to the current trends in society during that period. However, the novel has received criticism from numerous authors. This paper discusses Walter Scott’s critical analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in his Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Review of Frankenstein (1818).

    Read More

More about Tartuffe And Frankenstein Essay

Open Document