Throughout Frankenstein, a novel by Mary Shelley, the knowledge of the existence of a creator has a devastating effect on a creature as he struggles to reconcile with his own perception of himself with his increasing desire for approval and acceptance. Many virtues and vices can be found throughout the text including those such as acceptance and belonging. For the creature, he desperately wants to feel loved by his father figure, his creator, Victor Frankenstein. As for Victor, he flees from his creation, which he views as a problem, despite the fact that he knows how important it is to belong, and in spite of his knowledge that it will affect those he loves.
In the words of Victor Frankenstein, "One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race" (Shelley 21). As shown in this excerpt of the text, Victor values his own knowledge over the life of another. This twisted value is considered a vice because Victor is willing to sacrifice the life of
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another human being. Additionally contributing to its consideration of being an unacceptable value, this view could be interpreted as "wicked" behavior. In opposition to the view that Victor is a wicked figure with twisted values, Victor states, "The innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me." (Shelley 31).
As Victor calls the creature "helpless," it shows that Victor felt emotions such as pity towards the monster. This also shows that he felt regretful regarding his lack of an attempt to help the creature in developing values. In this particular portion of the text, he is supporting the fact that caregivers influence the way the children turn out, but later, contradicting his values he runs away from his own creation. In sum, throughout the novel, Victor experiences conflicting views regarding what he believes is right in regards to interaction with his
creation. A challenge that faced the monster throughout the text was the absence of a father figure. The monster was completely on his own, without anyone to show him right from wrong and other valuable lessons. As stated in the monster's point of view: "I was dependent on none and related to none. The path of my departure was free, and there was none to lament my annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them" (Shelley 185). As exemplified in this passage, the monster had absolutely no one who cared for him and did not know the feeling of belonging. Because Victor was not present to guide the monster, the creature grew and developed to be sick and lacking of morals. Perhaps if Victor had made the decision to lead the monster in its endeavors, they both would have more love in their life. In conclusion, major vices and virtues can be found exemplified among the characters in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In Victor's case, he obsessively searched for a recipe for creating life, and when he finally succeeded, he fled from it. Also, when Victor's monstrous creation threatened to be with him on his wedding night, Victor was only concerned with his own life, and completely disregarded the possibility that his newly wed wife was also in danger. These actions of the leading characters can be viewed from various perspectives, which can cause variation in their classification of either being a virtue or a vice.
Although humans have the tendency to set idealistic goals to better future generations, often the results can prove disastrous, even deadly. The tale of Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, focuses on the outcome of one man's idealistic motives and desires of dabbling with nature, which result in the creation of horrific creature. Victor Frankenstein was not doomed to failure from his initial desire to overstep the natural bounds of human knowledge. Rather, it was his poor parenting of his progeny that lead to his creation's thirst for the vindication of his unjust life. In his idealism, Victor is blinded, and so the creation accuses him for delivering him into a world where he could not ever be entirely received by the people who inhabit it. Not only failing to foresee his faulty idealism, nearing the end of the tale, he embarks upon a final journey, consciously choosing to pursue his creation in vengeance, while admitting he himself that it may result in his own doom. The creation of an unloved being and the quest for the elixir of life holds Victor Frankenstein more accountable for his own death than the creation himself.
Social contract theory develops a new understanding of society whereby individuals originate in a presocial state of nature and form societies to serve their private interests. At the center of social contract philosophy is a contradiction. Rather than bringing individuals together, society is designed to protect them from each other...As the challenge of negotiating between individual and social needs has had consequences for the contemporary understanding of the self as internally divided between the contrary pulls of self-interest and social commitment, social contract theory helps account for some of Frankenstein’s iconic cultural status and for the ongoing popular fascination with Victor’s dilemma.” This is sorted out by Mary Shelley in the novel because of one of the main character's tragic flaws. Victor essentially created the monster due to his tragic flaw of immense individualism. It is kind of ironic that Victor is individualistic, independent, and free, yet he created a life long companion that he is horrified by and that he blames for the murder of his youngest brother, his wife, and his friend and work
Victor’s lack of compassion and sympathy towards the monster causes him to become angry instead of guilty. His cruelness to his creation made the monster kill and hurt the people he did but “when [he] reflected on [the monster’s] crimes and malice, [Victor’s] hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation,”(Shelley 325). Without compassion Victor thinks that the only way to stop the monster is to get revenge on him, instead of just giving him the empathy and kindness that monster craved. Victor realizes that "if he were vanquished, [he] should be a free man...balanced by those horrors of remorse and guilt which would pursue [him] until death. ”(Shelley 731).
Relevancy of Frankenstein “The most miserable people are those who care only about themselves, understand only their own troubles and see only their own perspective.” This quote from an unknown source perfectly describes how selfish people are not always happy and they are not helping anyone except themselves. Victor Frankenstein shows many qualities that he is a very selfish person, and Frankenstein has been relevant for almost 200 years, but why? One of the major reasons is that we can learn from and understand that Victor Frankenstein was selfish and only cared about what he thought was right.
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.
It is good to be determined and passionate about the things that you are learning and doing, but it is not good to become obsessive about anything. In most cases obsession tends to lead people down the wrong path or cause them to make the wrong decisions in their life. One of the things that people used to be obsessed with was knowledge. This is because people knew so little about the world and about themselves. People were very curious about certain things and some decided to accidentally try things out which led to discoveries. But others decided to become obsessed about the subject that they were studying and destroy their lives in the process. One example is Frankenstein. He was a giant dumb smart person that was also obsessive about science
He says, “If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possible mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not benefiting to the human mind” (Shelley 34). In the beginning Victor has the philosophy that if and study weakens your “affections”, then it is “certainly unlawful”. This ironic philosophy serves to illuminate that Victor Frankenstein knew the consequence of acquiring knowledge in secret. Although Frankenstein’s personal is the adhesive to bind his egotistical fault, he takes little notice to the knowledge he has about the consequences of his endeavor. This ironic foreshadow, depicts the consequential outcomes of his weakening relationships and his deprecating social health.
Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein centers around a creator who rejects his own creation. The plot thickens as Victor Frankenstein turns his back on his creation out of fear and regret. The monster is cast out alone to figure out the world and as a result of a life with no love, he turns evil. Shelley seems to urge the reader to try a relate with this monster and avoid just seeing him as an evil being beyond repentance. There is no doubt that the monster is in fact evil; however, the monster’s evilness stems from rejection from his creator.
Frankenstein is a book written by Mary Shelley in 1818, that is revolved around a under privileged scientist named Victor Frankenstein who manages to create a unnatural human-like being. The story was written when Shelley was in her late teen age years, and was published when she was just twenty years old. Frankenstein is filled with several different elements of the Gothic and Romantic Movement of British literature, and is considered to be one of the earliest forms of science fiction. Frankenstein is a very complicated and complex story that challenges different ethics and morals on the apparent theme of dangerous knowledge. With the mysterious experiment that Dr. Victor Frankenstein conducted, Shelly causes her reader to ultimately ask themselves what price is too high to pay to gain knowledge. It is evident that Shelly allows the reader to sort of “wonder” about the reaction they would take when dealing with a situation such as the one implemented throughout the book.
Victor Frankenstein serves as an instrument of suffering of others and contributes to the tragic vision as a whole in this novel. He hurts those surrounding him by his selfish character and his own creation plots against his master due to the lack of happiness and love. The audience should learn from Frankenstein’s tragic life and character to always remain humble. We should never try to take superiority that is not granted to us because like victor we shall suffer and perish. He had the opportunity to make a difference in his life and take responsibility as a creator but his selfishness caused him to die alone just like what he had feared.
In Frankenstein, Shelley creates two very complex characters. They embody the moral dilemmas that arise from the corruption and disturbance of the natural order of the world. When Victor Frankenstein is attending school, he becomes infatuated with creating a living being and starts stealing body parts from morgues around the university. After many months of hard work, he finishes one stormy night bringing his creation to life. However, “now that [Victor] had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart” (Chambers). Right after Victor realizes what he has done, he falls into deep depression and must be nursed back to health by his friend. Victor spends the rest of the story facing consequences and moral problems from creating unnatural life. When he realizes that the ‘monster’ has killed his brother, even though no one believes him, he feels responsible for his brother’s murder because he was responsible for the existence of the ‘monster’. Also feeling responsible, Victor...
In the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, Knowledge is power for Victor Frankenstein. Mary Shelly explains that Dr. Frankenstein’s hunger for the knowledge to create life out of death only leads to Victor’s unfortunate monster. The consequences that Victor Frankenstein experiences from creating a creature from his own madness leads to his death as well as the creature. Mary Shelly explains in her novel Frankenstein that Victor’s need to study life and how it is created is dangerous; furthermore, the abomination that the doctor creates should have never been created; however, the monster that Victor creates is his own monstrosity.
By definition, knowledge is the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association (Merriam-Webster.com). In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley considers knowledge as a “dangerous” factor. The danger of it is proved throughout the actions of the characters Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the creature. The characters all embody the theme of knowledge in different ways. Shelley supports her opinion about knowledge by using references from the Bible and Paradise Lost. She uses these references to show the relationship between God’s Adam and Frankenstein’s creature, and how nothing turns out as great as God’s creation. Mary Shelley’s goal is to teach a lesson on how destructive the desire for knowledge really is.
The free dictionary online defines knowledge as “an awareness, consciousness, or familiarity gained by experience or learning”. Power, on the other hand, means “the ability or official capacity of a person, group or nation to exercise great influence or control and authority over others”. In Voltaire’s “Candide”, Goethe’s “Faust”, and Shelley’s Frankenstein, the quest for more knowledge and power sets the stage for the story yet the characters, Candide, Frankenstein, and Faust remain unhappy after acquiring the much desired knowledge and power. It can be said, therefore, that knowledge, and even money, often times twists and corrupts the mind because of the control (power) it gives people over others.
He brought the creature to life and realized once it was born that it wasn't a good idea. Victor was disgusted and scared of the monster, so he ran off and left the creature, which was irresponsible and selfish. Instead of teaching the creature morals and helping him adjust to society, he left him which made him very angry. “ Unable