The Use Of Foil Characters In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

646 Words2 Pages

In her time, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein stood as a rejection against science and its principles, and an appraisal in favor of the Romantic Movement, but looking deeper into Shelley's characters her views might have been different from those who used her literature to support their own beliefs. Victor Frankenstein, the Creature, and Robert Walton are more than one toned characters, but are three dimensional, and give insight as to Mary Shelley's true opinions toward her characters. In her novel, Frankenstein Shelley makes a moral judgment of her characters, Frankenstein, the Creature, and Walton, through her use of biblical allusion, mythological allusion, and foil characters. Mary Shelley refers to Frankenstein as the modern day Prometheus. This mythological allusion compares Frankenstein to a titan who defies the gods, creating mankind and stealing fire from Mount Olympus to give to them. Victor's declaration that "a new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me (54)" is similar to Prometheus's desire to enlighten and give life to human beings. In the same way …show more content…

Both characters have explorative traits and seek knowledge, but where one is blindly obsessive, letting his ambition lead towards his ultimate downfall, the other is balanced, comprehending the dangers of his pursuits, and obtaining a better fate. Walton proclaims, "the die is cast; I have consented to return if we are not destroyed... it requires more philosophy than I possess to bear this injustice with patience (Shelley 267)." Through Shelley's foil of these two characters, she presents both sides to one coin. The foil reiterates Shelley's judgment of Frankenstein's failed morality, by presenting Walton's character, who unlike Frankenstein does not face devastating consequences for his actions due to his intact

Show More
Related

  • Foils In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Or, The Modern Prometheus

    1004 Words  | 3 Pages

    A foil is when a characters differences contrast with another in order to show the main characters traits clearly. By using certain parts of their personalities, the reader sees the other characters opposing qualities. When an author uses foil in a novel the main character is thoroughly developed because the reader can gain more information about the characters own reactions. Mary Shelley’s use of foil characters in Frankenstein Or, The Modern Prometheus enhances the story greatly. Shelley’s way of comparing Victor, the Creature, Robert Walton and Clerval is what leads to the readers greater understanding of who Victor is. The most obvious foil throughout the novel is the Creature and Victor, child and father figure. Shelley uses their similarities

    Read More

  • Frankenstein: Shelley Use of Mascuine and Feminine Roles

    2033 Words  | 5 Pages

    ‘[The] characters and plot of Frankenstein reflect . . . Shelley’s conflicted feelings about the masculine circle which surrounded her.’

    Read More

  • Frankenstein: Mary Shelley's Ability to Create Sympathy for the Monster

    1840 Words  | 4 Pages

    We are shown that this ‘monster’ is a ‘creature’ and more of a human than we think. It is in the complex structure of the novel that Mary Shelley creates sympathy. We shift from Robert Walton to Victor Frankenstein to the monster and finally back to Walton. With each shift of perspective, the reader gains new information about both the facts of the story and the reliability of the narrator. Each perspective adds pieces of information that only they knows: Walton explains the circumstances of Victor’s last days, Victor explains his creation of the monster, the monster explains his turn to evil.

    Read More

  • Juxtaposition In Frankenstein

    823 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, illustrates the Romantic idea of the sublime naturalworld as an emotional experience for the characters of the novel. Within the text, Shelleyutilizes an allusion to the John Milton’s biblical story, Paradise Lost, to make a parallel betweenthe characters. Within the passage, the monster compares himself, as well as his creator, Victor,to the characters Adam and Satan. He comes to realize that he is more similar to Satan;ultimately, leading him to his reign of terror and the revenge he wishes to impose on Victor. Themonster realizes that he is similar to Adam in Paradise Lost in that they both do not want to bealone. The monster also realizes that there is good in the world that is deeply contrasted with

    Read More

  • Examples Of Ambition In Frankenstein

    501 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the first four letters of Frankenstein, Walton's ambitions are revealed. He is on a journey and takes himself and his crew through treacherous conditions, and yet, he continues. His ambition causes him to disregard the possibility of death and the danger he is putting himself and others in in order to reach his goal. Unlike Victor though, Walton is able to save himself, all thanks to Victor himself. After spending some time with Walton on the ship, Victor realizes that Walton shares his ambitious nature. He asks him, “Unhappy man! Do you share my madness? Have you drunk also from the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!” After telling him about the dangers of ambition, Victor tells Walton, “Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness and tranquility and avoid ambition, even it it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and

    Read More

  • Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a Critique of Masculinity

    1775 Words  | 4 Pages

    The idea for the novel of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein came to her one night when she was staying in the company of what has been called ‘her male coterie’, including Lord Byron and her husband, Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley’s whole life seems to have been heavily influenced by men. She idolised her father, William Godwyn, and appears to have spent a good part of her life trying very hard to impress both him and her husband. There seems to have been a distinct lack of female influence, her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, having died weeks after her birth, being replaced by a neglectful step-mother. These aspects of her life are perhaps evident in her novel. The characters and plot of Frankenstein were perhaps influenced by Shelley’s conflicting feelings about the predominately masculine circle which surrounded her, and perhaps the many masculine traits that we see in novel were based upon those of the male figures in Shelley’s own life. In this essay I will attempt to show some of these traits.

    Read More

  • Anne K Mellor Analysis

    724 Words  | 2 Pages

    This novel supports Shelley’s thought about society’s attitude toward female authors and how they were considered inferior. She demonstrates how female authors are shunned by society, just like the creature is shunned. The creature embodies the feminist ideals Shelley weaves into the novel and highlights societies unfair treatment of women. In some ways Shelley identifies with Victor because both of their creations were not what they expected them to be and were worried about the criticism they would receive for it. They both hid their creations for a while, Shelley did not immediately claim the novel and Frankenstein did not claim his experiment

    Read More

  • Harold Bloom's Analusis of Frankenstein

    704 Words  | 2 Pages

    Harold Bloom, a well-known American critic explores Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to find true meaning. Throughout his essay, he gives answers to the lingering question of who the real monster is. He also paints a clear picture of a major theme in the novel, the Romantic mythology of the self. Through reading his essay, it opens up new light to Mary Shelley's novel. It gives new meaning to the monster and his creator.

    Read More

  • Narration in Frankenstein

    1209 Words  | 3 Pages

    Although “Frankenstein” is the story of Victor and his monster, Walton is the most reliable narrator throughout the novel. However, like most narrator’s, even his retelling of Victor’s story is skewed by prejudice and favoritism of the scientist’s point of view. Yet this could be attributed to the only view points he ever gets to truly hear are from Victor himself and not the monster that he only gets to meet after he comes to mourn his fallen master.

    Read More

  • Romanticism in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    2058 Words  | 5 Pages

    Mary Shelley, with her brilliant tale of mankind's obsession with two opposing forces: creation and science, continues to draw readers with Frankenstein's many meanings and effect on society. Frankenstein has had a major influence across literature and pop culture and was one of the major contributors to a completely new genre of horror. Frankenstein is most famous for being arguably considered the first fully-realized science fiction novel. In Frankenstein, some of the main concepts behind the literary movement of Romanticism can be found. Mary Shelley was a colleague of many Romantic poets such as her husband Percy Shelley, and their friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, even though the themes within Frankenstein are darker than their brighter subjects and poems. Still, she was very influenced by Romantics and the Romantic Period, and readers can find many examples of Romanticism in this book. Some people actually argue that Frankenstein “initiates a rethinking of romantic rhetoric”1, or is a more cultured novel than the writings of other Romantics. Shelley questions and interacts with the classic Romantic tropes, causing this rethink of a novel that goes deeper into societal history than it appears. For example, the introduction of Gothic ideas to Frankenstein challenges the typical stereotyped assumptions of Romanticism, giving new meaning and context to the novel. Mary Shelley challenges Romanticism by highlighting certain aspects of the movement while questioning and interacting with the Romantic movement through her writing.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Patriarchal Society In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    1298 Words  | 3 Pages

    In order to achieve his goals, Frankenstein put his life and the lives of others in jeopardy. He could have died at the hands of the monster and people he loved did die because of the monster. Frankenstein would have believed that Walton should have moved forward and done whatever it takes in order to achieve his goal because he risked everything in order to bring the monster to life. On the other hand, Shelley would view Walton as not being obedient to following his goal. In Frankenstein, the characters are “…killed by their very obedience to the role prescribed for them by the male patriarchal society, which robs them of any ability to save themselves” (Hermann, Baderoon, & Steenkamp, 123). If Walton achieved his goal of reaching the North Pole, he would have been killed. But, he was not obedient to his goal and turned around. This lead to Walton having the ability to save

    Read More

  • Ethical Issues in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    1228 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mary Shelley expresses various ethical issues by creating a mythical monster called Frankenstein. There is some controversy on how Mary Shelley defines human nature in the novel, there are many features of the way humans react in situations. Shelley uses a relationship between morality and science, she brings the two subjects together when writing Frankenstein, and she shows the amount of controversy with the advancement of science. There are said to be some limits to the scientific inquiry that could have restrained the quantity of scientific implications that Mary Shelley was able to make, along with the types of scientific restraints. Mary Shelley wrote this classic novel in such a way that it depicted some amount of foreshadowing of the world today.

    Read More

  • The Destructive Desire for Knowledge: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

    1118 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...Frankenstein and the creature. The situations that each character experience are lessons about how seeking prohibited intelligence comes with extreme consequences. Frankenstein is a Gothic novel which means it involves the supernatural; however, because it contains religious qualities it is more appealing to the common people’s idea of knowledge. Mary Shelley achieves her goal of informing the audience that man should not seek or possess the level of knowledge that God acquires. One should learn from the situations present in the novel because life comes with an enormous amount of knowledge; going after the unknown is an act of rebellion against God.

    Read More

  • The “Other” Creation: Post-Colonialism in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

    1252 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein (sometimes also known as The Modern Prometheus) is the classic gothic novel of her time. In this eerie tale, Dr. Victor Frankenstein – suffering from quite an extreme superiority complex – brings to life a creature made from body parts of deceased individuals from nearby cemeteries. Rather than to embrace the Creature as his own, Frankenstein alienates him because of his unpleasant appearance. Throughout the novel, the Creature is ostracized not only by Frankenstein but by society as a whole. Initially a kind and gentle being, the Creature becomes violent and eventually seeks revenge for his creator’s betrayal. Rather than to merely focus on the exclusion of the Creature from society, Shelley depicts the progression of Dr. Frankenstein’s seclusion from other humans as well, until he and the Creature ultimately become equals – alone in the world with no one to love, and no one to love them back. Frankenstein serves as more than simply a legendary tale of horror, but also as a representation of how isolation and prejudice can result in the demise of the individual.

    Read More

  • Passion And Responsibility In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    1142 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley highlights on the experiences her characters undergo through the internal war of passion and responsibility. Victor Frankenstein lets his eagerness of knowledge and creating life get so out of hand that he fails to realize what the outcome of such a creature would affect humankind. Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, highlights on how Frankenstein’s passion of knowledge is what ultimately causes the decline of his health and the death of him and his loved ones.

    Read More

More about The Use Of Foil Characters In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Open Document