The Characteristics Of Sympathy In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Quintero 1David QuinteroJacksonEng 10010/24/17FrankensteinBranch Rickey once said, “Sympathy is a Greek word that means to suffer, to sympathize with somebody means you suffer with them.” I believe that sympathizing with something or somebody means that you have the same state of mind as they do. It means that you agree, at least to some degree, with the reasoning for their actions. It is easy to sympathize with the hero of a story because they have always had some evil done to them which makes them a victim. But have you ever thought about sympathizing with the bad guy? In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein you are forced to look through the viewpoint of all of the characters in the story, from the creator of the so-called monster, victor Frankenstein

Never in my life would I justify sympathizing with an evil being or a monster, or so I thought, until I read Frankenstein. I have never stepped into the shoes of a monster until I read this book. I also have never taken into consideration the changes a human can make to essentially fall from grace and become the monster himself. This story forces the reader to sympathize with all characters involved from the creator, Victor Frankenstein, to the monster he creates and all of the people who are affected. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is about a man, a scientist, named Victor Frankenstein. Victor was obsessed with the science of natural philosophy alchemy and chemistry. He was obsessed with how life is created and how life is ended. After attending school in

I believe it was here that Creature and Victor switch roles.The monster began to grow a sense of family through watching Agatha and Felix, he also started to understand how unpleasant he looks and knows that this is why people are so scared and terrified of him. He is stuck in between a rock and a hard place he wants a companion but knows he can never have a human companion because no human will ever accept him. After hearing Felix and Safie speak the creature finally begins to ask himself, “Was I then a monster,” he asks, “a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?” (Shelley 105). After reading pages of Victor’s journal creature understands how horrific his creation was and how disgusted Victor actually was after his creation. It is only when the Creature starts to tell his story that the reader is almost forced to feel Sympathetic towards creature and his longing for a companion, throughout creature’s story you begin to understand the reasons he had to become a monster, and how he was forced to educate himself and even learn to survive. He entered this world with no prior knowledge of it and learned to live through necessity.Creatures descent into darkness is deepened when he reveals himself to the old man in the cottage while everyone else is gone. While creature is explaining his situation to the blind man the other three return unexpectedly and Felix drives creature off, disgusted with his