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Frankenstein moral ambiguity in Frankenstein
Frankenstein moral ambiguity in Frankenstein
Frankenstein moral ambiguity in Frankenstein
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Victor Frankenstein’s Creature is innocent and unknowing when he is first abandoned, but through knowledge and run-ins with humans he becomes a hated and miserable life form. Although the Creature is alone, not all of his life is spent as a fiend; often times the Creature is benevolent. Victor Frankenstein's Creature in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein goes through an extreme character change based on the quote, "I was benevolent and good--misery made me a fiend" (62).
Everywhere the Creature goes he is met with hatred, but through the hate he still tries to help others. After, "The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped . . . ." (67). The Creature finds himself in the woods near the De Lacey home. Remaining kind in spirit the Creature tells that, "I often took his tools, the use of which I quickly discovered, and brought home firing sufficient for the consumption of several days" (71). Though his first contact with humans is awful, the Creature’s benevolence leads him to help and learn from the De Lacey family.
The Creature learns to read, speak, and write while living in the hovel attached to the De Lacey home. After many months, he decides it is time to meet M. De Lacey and try to form a relationship with him. The conversation is going well until Felix, Safie, and Agatha return home and quickly fled, but not before Felix attacked the Creature with a stick. The Creature realizes he could easily tear Felix apart, but refrains and is saddened by the thought that the De Lacey’s would not accept him. Through his grief, the Creature becomes enraged and begins his descent from benevolence.
The Creature starts his transition into a f...
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...urns when his creator, Victor Frankenstein, dies. The Creature realizes Victor is one of his many victims and tells Walton, “my heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture . . . .” (153). This quote tells how the Creature was loving and innocent, but became evil when met hate and confirms the statement “I was benevolent and good--misery made me a fiend" (62).
In Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s Creature goes through an extreme character change based on the quote, "I was benevolent and good--misery made me a fiend" (62). The Creature began as unknowing and innocent, but once met with hatred he became miserable. Although kind and benevolent when first created, loneliness, hate, and other aspects led to the Creature’s downfall.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley introduces the change from good to evil with the attention that guardians give a child. William Crisman, in his critique of Mary Shelley’s work, identifies the “sibling rivalry” between Victor and the rest of his family. Crisman remarks that Victor feels as if he is the most important person in his parents’ lives, since he was Alphonse’s and Caroline’s only child. The Frankensteins adopt Elizabeth and Victor sarcastically remarks that he has a happy childhood. This prompts Victor starts to read essays about alchemy and study natural science. Anne Mellor, another critic of Frankenstein, proposes that Frankenstein’s creature was born a good person and society’s reaction to him caused him to turn evil. Victor’s makes the creature in his own perception of beauty, and his perception of beauty was made during a time in his life when he had secluded himself from his family and friends. He perceived the monster as “Beautiful!”, but Victor unknowingly expressed the evil in himself, caused by secluding himself from everybody, onto the creature (60). In this way, the creature is Victor’s evil mirrored onto a body. The expression of Victor onto the monster makes the townspeople repulsed by the creature. The theory of the “alter ego” coincides with Crisman’s idea of sibling rivalry (Mellor). Mary Shelley conveys that through Crisman’s idea of sibling rivalry, Victor isolates himself from society. Mellor describes the isolation during his creation of his creature leads to him giving the creature false beauty that causes Victor to abandon him and society to reject him.
In the novel ‘Frankenstein’ the creature is presented through many narrative voices, it is through Victor's narrative that we see the Creature as a 'wretch', 'daemon' and a 'fiend'. Mary Shelley chooses to present the creature as a ‘fiend’ due to circumstance beyond the creature’s control
In Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the Creature executes extreme and irreversible acts due to his isolation from society. Although the Creature displays kindness, his isolation drives him to act inhumanely.
As a tragic hero, Victor’s tragedies begin with his overly obsessive thirst for knowledge. Throughout his life, Victor has always been looking for new things to learn in the areas of science and philosophy. He goes so far with his knowledge that he ends up creating a living creature. Victor has extremely high expectations for his creation but is highly disappointed with the outcome. He says, “I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley 35). Frankenstein neglects the creature because of his horrifying looks, which spark the beginning of numerous conflicts and tragedies. At this point, the creature becomes a monster because of Victor’s neglect and irresponsibility. The monster is forced to learn to survive on his own, without anyone or anything to guide him along the way. Plus, the monster’s ugly looks cause society to turn against him, ad...
The Monster scares the villagers, “some fled, some attacked” automatically hating the strange being that had come into their midst (75). However, the Monster does nothing against the villagers, even though he is seen with giant stature and brute strength. After the village incident, the Monster flees and finds a small family living in the wilderness in a small cottage. As he stays near the cottagers for a time, he begins to learn that he is indeed alone. He learns the roles of family members and yet he does nothing to provoke them.
The Creature was born capable of thing such as love and sympathy though he lost these capabilities as a result of how he was treated. The creature’s heart was ‘fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy’ but wrenched with misery to ‘vice and hatred’. On a cold night in November, Victor Frankenstein brought his creation to life. This creation has thin black lips, inhuman eyes, and
Throughout most of her novel, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley establishes a them stating no one can be born evil but the life a person lives turns them evil. The creature becomes a monster everyone believes him to be after continuous rejection and abuse. This is the reason why readers become more sympathetic towards Frankenstein's creation than any other character in the novel.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein describes a mad scientist by the name of Victor Frankenstein and the initially amiable creature assembled by him. Through questionable means of experimentation, this monster is constructed through the reattachment of several cadavers and a bolt of lightning. Upon achieving the magnificent feat of reanimation, Victor, rather than revelling in his creation, is appalled, abandoning the creature. The physical appearance of the monster terrorizes everyone he meets and is unfortunately shunned from the world. The newborn monster develops a nomadic lifestyle after being ostracized by nearly every community he travels to, but eventually finds refuge near a secluded cottage. While returning from a nearby forest, the creature
In Frankenstein, Victor’s monster suffers much loneliness and pain at the hands of every human he meets, as he tries to be human like them. First, he is abandoned by his creator, the one person that should have accepted, helped, and guided him through the confusing world he found himself in. Next, he is shunned wherever he goes, often attacked and injured. Still, throughout these trials, the creature remains hopeful that he can eventually be accepted, and entertains virtuous and moral thoughts. However, when the creature takes another crushing blow, as a family he had thought to be very noble and honorable abandons him as well, his hopes are dashed. The monster then takes revenge on Victor, killing many of his loved ones, and on the humans who have hurt him. While exacting his revenge, the monster often feels guilty for his actions and tries to be better, but is then angered and provoked into committing more wrongdoings, feeling self-pity all the while. Finally, after Victor’s death, the monster returns to mourn the death of his creator, a death he directly caused, and speaks about his misery and shame. During his soliloquy, the monster shows that he has become a human being because he suffers from an inner conflict, in his case, between guilt and a need for sympathy and pity, as all humans do.
With the appearance of a monster and the mind of a sociopath, it could be perceived that the true villain of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is the creature that Victor Frankenstein created. However, despite the creature killing the family members that Frankenstein loved the most in revenge for his abandonment, Victor Frankenstein is the true monster of Frankenstein, mostly because of his narcissism, but also because he believes himself to be the only victim, he is continuously disgusted by and abandons his creation, and the way that Frankenstein treats his creature in the times after he meets the creature again is more evil than anything that the creature has done to Frankenstein. Frankenstein, obsessed with bringing the dead back to life, sets
In Mary Shelly's novel Frankenstein, The Creature's sad fate is a representation of what it means to be different. Because of this unfortunate destiny, The Creature remains hidden and secluded. He feels the isolation forced upon him and wicked appearance.
The value of his life increases as he runs from Zaroff and the hounds thru the woods. He also refuses to kill Zaroff when he has the opportunity because he has valued the life of other human beings. In the time he was being chased, he learned to even value the lives of the other animals in the world, and he thinks of of being an animal at bay. Furthermore, he will try to not become what he fears.
A monster is usually viewed to be a supernatural creature that humans judge based on looks and not necessarily on personality. In the novel, Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley, the monster is a creature Victor creates but abandons immediately because he is horrified by his own creation. Due to the monster’s appearance, society does not give the creature a chance to show his true self. Therefore, the monster faces an external conflict because of Frankenstein’s and society's rejection, making it difficult for him to blend into his new life. Victor creates the monster because of his unusual compulsion of aspiring to be like God. However, Victor does not know how to treat or be responsible for his creature. Victor Frankenstein is the true monster
...that had to become evil in order to get what he wants. It was Frankenstein and the society’s fault that the monster actually turned into a monster, they didn’t reach out to him, and instead they froze him out of the society because of his looks.
Though Shelley and Lovecraft’s monsters are characterized by their physical appearance, the outer appearances of their monsters do not determine the monstrosity of their characters. The true monster of the stories is the character that does ugly actions regardless of if their exterior is ugly. While Frankenstein’s creation is described by Victor as “hideous” (chapter 5), and the creation is referred to as a monster multiply times, he himself is not the true monster of Shelley’s novel. Victor, who is responsible for the wickedness of his creation, is the true monster of the story. By creating a hideous individual and shunning him, he forces the creation to survive on his own with a forced handicap; Victor becomes evil. This evilness is equivalent to breaking someone’s legs in the middle of the forest, with no way of getting home, and then leaving them alone. Victor creates ...