Frankenstein Essay Topics

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When read, it is evident that Mary Shelley wrote her novel, Frankenstein, to influence the reader's opinion on certain themes. One of these topics is life, and one's right to live or create life. The book opens many doors for discussion on this difficult to swallow theme. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, many questions are raised regarding life and the connections from one life to another, similar to moral questions asked today regarding life. One big question asked about life today contemplates the ability to create artificial life. With extensive technology advances over many years, humanity has reached a point at which they can create more intelligent beings than themselves. This, clearly, has its positive and negative points. The …show more content…

Unlike any other on Earth, the monster was situated with a great many differences. This caused most people to consider him as non-human, or not a person. However, from the reader’s perspective, the monster possesses many human qualities, including tendency to love before hating, ability to learn quickly, and tendency to search for revenge. According to John Locke’s theory of education, humans acquire knowledge by experience, and are not born resentful. We do see this in the monster. Before he is humiliated by the de Lacey family, the monster learns to love them. He finds great joy in watching them succeed, and learns to speak from observing Felix’s lessons for Safie. Eventually the monster attempts to seek friendship in the de Lacey family, but it fails miserably. As he repeated the story to Victor, “At that instant the cottage door opened, and Felix, Safie, and Agatha entered. Who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me? Agatha fainted; and Safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung: in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick. I could have torn him limb from limb, as the loin rends the antelope. But my heart sank within me as with bitter sickness, and I refrained” (Shelley, p.114-115, 1921). Even though the monster was greatly humiliated and devastated by his failure to find friendship, he refrained from hurting Felix, thus loving before hating. For these reasons and others, the reader most often considered the monster a person, even though he looks dreadfully different. The monster is also seen standing up for himself against Victor, as he knows Victor wants to kill him. In chapter seventeen, the monster

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