From the moment the monster was created, he began to discover the perplexity of the world around him. It is debatable whether he was good or evil from birth but his appearance plays an undeniable role. The appearance of the monster instantly distances himself from humans and his quest for acceptance is similar to that in the quests of his creator and paralleled in Ulysses account of his death in Canto 26 of Dante’s Inferno. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the quest for knowledge plays a key role in the protagonist’s life. The ambition created by this quest consumes him much as it did in Ulysses.
Enter Ulysses into Dante’s travels through hell. Ulysses was the king of Ithaca and a true hero from Greek mythology. This begs the question of why
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Dante would include this mythological pagan hero in his Christian epic. Ulysses speaks on the manner of his own death. He relates his conquest of Troy followed by the Greek hero finding himself sailing toward the southern hemisphere. There he finds himself in the midst of a despondent crew about ready to give up on their quest and so Ulysses delivers this speech: “'O brothers!' I began, 'woe to the west 'Through perils without number now have we reach'd; 'To this the short remaining watch, that yet 'Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof 'Of the unpeopled world, following the track 'Of Phoebus. Call to mind from whence ye sprang: 'Ye were not form'd to live the life of brutes, 'But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.'” Ulysses’ pursuit to travel to the “unpeopled world” ultimately lead to his demise.
Dante relates to this in his own quest for knowledge being the reason he was brought to hell in the first place. This quote from Ulysses’ speech brings to mind another similar one given by Robert Walton in attempt to boost the fleeting hope of his crew. Ulysses speech is inspiring, and calls upon the crew to live the lives they were destined to. He calls to mind the great honors of what they are trying to achieve, but he talks about where they came from as if to say should they give up now then they are nothing more than “brutes”. This mindset was one shared by Frankenstein and Walton …show more content…
alike. Frankenstein was consumed. Driven mad by what he believed to be his purpose in life. He worked endlessly to the point were when he had finished he had to be nursed back to health. Frankenstein so driven by this ambition to replicate life, discarded his own health to achieve it. Again at the end of the book he is so driven to destroy his creation, he falls so gravely ill that he dies. Walton hears the struggle and it forces him to reevaluate his own life choices. Seeing what is happening to someone from a third person perspective saves the lives of both Dante and Walton. They learned that their relentless pursuit of knowledge was only leading them to a tragic death. Almost more importantly they learned that not having this knowledge wouldn’t make them any less of a person, it would make them more. Knowledge is a theme strongly evident in Frankenstein.
It is clear that knowledge is what keeps the beast within monster dormant. This has a direct contradiction on how knowledge effected Ulysses and Frankenstein. This represents the dualism between knowledge and brutality. The monster represents the beast within all of us. The beast it is subdued with knowledge, yet is ever present waiting for you look into the water and witness its reflection. Yet, there is a dark side to knowledge. Knowledge creates a hunger that is insatiable. There is no end to what we as humans can learn, but human nature dictates we never stop. This urgency to learn everything comes from our realization that we are soon to meet our maker and quickly it turns from a journey towards an unreachable goal but one where we are pitted against an hourglass that is quickly running out of sand. This hunger is a beast of its own and somewhere between this beast and the beast of the unknown, we find our
humanity. Knowledge for Dante was power, and he drove himself to the pits of hell. Knowledge for Ulysses and Walton was Glory and they pushed their crews to death. Knowledge for Frankenstein was and through his own ambition he pushed himself to death. Knowledge comes at a price, just as it did for Adam and Eve. The monster’s belief in who he is, is belied by his appearance just as Frankenstein’s ambition is belied by his health. The monster is a physical manifestation of human nature and no amount of knowledge or ambition will allow you to escape it with your life.
In conclusion, we can see that Dante presents the reader with a potentially life-altering chance to participate in his journey through Hell. Not only are we allowed to follow Dante's own soul-searching journey, we ourselves are pressed to examine the state of our own souls in relation to the souls in Inferno. It is not just a story to entertain us; it is a display of human decision and the perpetual impact of those decisions.
The Monster, created by Victor Frankenstein out of carefully selected corpses, is a round, dynamic character. Born as a tabula rasa, the creature is accosted by all the natural elements of our ordinary physical world as an adult with no guidance. He experiences light and sight, cold and hunger and immediate rejection by his creator. His mind is intellectually capable of this awareness very quickly. In the beginning of Chapter 11, the Monster recounts the ‘oppressive light’, insatiable thirst and extreme tiredness which he experienced shortly after becoming alive. “I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch; ...
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.
As Frankenstein is enroute to his pursuit of gaining more knowledge, he states, “I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed” (Shelley 41). Frankenstein’s decision in allowing his intellectual ambitions to overpower everything else in his life leads him to be blinded to the dangers of creating life. He isolates himself from his society when creating the monster, letting himself be immersed in his creation while being driven by his passions, allowing nobody to be near him. The fact that he allows this creation of a monster to consume his total being reveals how blinded he is to the immorality of stepping outside the boundaries of science and defying nature. His goal in striving to achieve what wants to in placing man over nature makes him lose his sense of self as all he is focused on is the final product of his creation. He starts to realize his own faults as after he has created the monster, he becomes very ill and states, “The form of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was forever before my eyes, and I raved incessantly concerning him” (48). His impulsive decision to make the monster leads him to abhorring it as it does not turn out to be what he has expected. Because he chooses to isolate himself in creating the
I had the opportunity to read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley several years ago and it became one of my favorite books. My initial feeling was sorrow, what a wonderful story that has been slowly destroyed by Hollywood through the years. We think of Victor Frankenstein as a mad scientist trying to destroy mankind, and the monster having bolts in his neck with very little intellect. Mary Shelley’s book is completely different from the Hollywood version we are accustom to. The monster is intelligent and has emotions, the mad scientist or Victor was scared of his own creation due to his appearance. The monster initially showed no signs of evil in the novel, but where did he learn it from? Who is the real evil monster
When we are first introduced to Dante the Pilgrim, we perceive in him a Renaissance intellectual, who despite his intelligence and religiosity has lost the “path that does not stray” (I.3). Having thus lost touch with the tenets of orthodox Catholicism, a higher power has chosen for him to undertake an epic journey. (The devout are able to identify this power with the one Judeo-Christian God, while pagans and sinners often attribute the impetus behind the Pilgrim’s voyage to fate.)
What is a monster, really? Is it really a Creature that has three eyes instead of two, with pus seeping out of every crevice in his face and an abnormally large form? Or is it someone with a mind so corrupt it rivals that of Satan? Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a story within a story that centers on the tale of a man with an immense thirst of knowledge and a fetish to imitate the Creator. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a lot like the Greek mythological tale of the Greek God, Prometheus, and his brother, Epimetheus, who were assigned the task of creating man. The story captivates the theme of monstrosity. Mary Shelley wrote the novel in a form so the reader’s opinions never stray far from sympathy for the monster and apathy for Victor Frankenstein. The novel looks at “Monstrosity” and “Humanity” in a deeply analytical way.
...ards monstrous figures and sympathy towards those who seem to be tortured unjustly. In his perverse education, with instruction from Virgil and the shades, Dante learns to replace mercy with brutality, because sympathy in Hell condones sin and denies divine justice. The ancient philosopher Plato, present in the first level of Hell, argues in The Allegory of the Cave that truth is possible via knowledge of the Form of the Good. Similarly, Dante acquires truth through a gradual understanding of contrapasso and the recognition of divine justice in the afterlife. Ultimately, Dante recognizes that the actions of the earthly fresh are important because the soul lives on afterwards to face the ramifications. By expressing his ideas on morality and righteousness, Dante writes a work worth reading, immortalizes his name, and exalts the beliefs of his Christian audience.
Throughout Frankenstein, one assumes that Frankenstein’s creation is the true monster. While the creation’s actions are indeed monstrous, one must also realize that his creator, Victor Frankenstein, is also a villain. His inconsiderate and selfish acts as well as his passion for science result in the death of his friend and family members and ultimately in his own demise. Throughout the novel, Shelley investigates the idea of monstrosity. She makes the point that a monster does not have to be genuinely evil in order to be considered monstrous.
The monster of the novel is often misattributed with the name, “Frankenstein.” However, Victor Frankenstein can ultimately be considered the true monster of this tale. His obsession would lead to the corruption of his soul and the creation of two monsters—one himself, and the other, the creature. In attempting to take on the role of God, nature would become a monster to Victor and destroy his life. These elements of monstrosity in Frankenstein drive the meaning of its story.
When Dante is slow to learn these lessons, such as when he sympathizes with sinners or remains too long in one circle of Hell, Virgil often grows impatient with him, a trait that humanizes his usual impersonal nature. He is wise, commanding, and resourceful, but he is often helpless in protecting Dante from the true dangers of Hell and completing the journey. In Canto VIII, we see the inept side of Virgil when he requires assistance from an angelic messenger to enter the City of Dis. Allegorically, this trouble shows that even reason and wisdom cannot overcome every obstacle and that divine intervention is far more powerful than anything a human has to offer. However, reason is necessary in life to provide morals to a soul by helping him distinguish between and understand good and evil, explain the nature of moral law, and even lead him to the threshold of perfection, but reason cannot offer redemption. Only divine love provides the purification and final salvation. This is why in Purgatorio, Beatrice must take over as the guide in the Garden of Eden, where man is restored to
Victor Frankenstein is originally a happy character that loves to learn and read a large variety of books. He was a fiery individual who sought to understand all knowledge; regardless of how practical the information was. Evidence of this is when his father tells him not to worry about fictional writers like Cornelius Agrippa. Yet, Frankenstein states, “But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew more. I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple” (21). Frankenstein embodies the movement in science to understand everything, and that is not necessarily a good thing (Storment 2). Frankenstein only understands that this train of thought is bad when he reaches the pinnacle of knowledge and produces the creature. The fruits of Frankenstein’s labor end up costing him the lives of his friends and family, as well as his own sanity. The feeling of guilt thrives in Frankenstein because he knows his work was the direct cause of the chaos in his life. In Frankenstein’s case, his goal of total enlightenment led to his pitiful demise. Frankenstein’s creature was not originally a monster. He is born with good intentions and is a gentle- although atrocious looking- being until he learns of the sins of the human race. The ultimate factor in the creature’s progression from harmless to
Dante had access to these teachings and uses them to relate to the reader in a more straightforward way of why there is delineation. In this function Aristotle is not the agent of knowing, but rather a way to relay the reasoning and rationale behind God’s judgment; in this way God is not limited by Aristotle. Dante’s Inferno presents the reader with many questions and thought-provoking dialogue to interpret. These crossroads provide points of contemplation and thought. Dante’s graphic depiction of hell and its eternal punishment is filled with imagery and allegorical meanings.
Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice, wrath and unworthiness. He is lead by Virgil, who is a representation of intellect. Through Dante's experiences he will purge his sins.
In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses the motif of monstrosity to convey the theme that a person’s outward appearance is not what makes them a monster but rather their actions or inactions that classify true monstrosity. Despite the fact that the monster Victor Frankenstein creates is a literal example of monstrosity in the novel there are many parts that give meaning to monstrosity within character’s actions. Although Victor appears normal, since he is human his ambitions, secrets, selfishness, and inaction makes him a monster himself. Along with monstrous characters the pursuit of knowledge that is seen in Victor, his monster, and Walton in Frankenstein prove that knowledge can be a monstrosity. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is created using the life stories of different characters in the novel. The novel itself could be seen as a monster created similarly to Victor’s monster.