A Comparative Analysis of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Prominent authors have different ways in making their works distinguished. Some had influenced different authors with their style and themes which may show their presence in those authors’ work. One of the remarkable authors of English literature, John Milton, was known for his epic poem, Paradise Lost. This epic poem with Satan as the protagonist, has influenced various works of Literature, one of which is Frankenstein, a novel written by Mary Shelley. With the guidance of Mary Shelley’s husband, Percy Shelley who was greatly influenced by Milton, a Miltonic element was somehow evident in her novel. Mary Shelley was able to write a work with a series of complex parallels to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the story of Adam and Eve was used to portray to his readers how to be a better Christian. However, the protagonist in the epic is Satan, not Adam and Eve. Satan is considered to be the protagonist of the epic, because he had a goal, which is to corrupt humankind. Though his aspirations are evil, he still struggled to achieve it. He is considered to be a Byronic hero, an outlaw that is tormented by his past and is isolated from society. Satan was expelled from Heaven because of his jealousy from the Son of God which caused him to be a rebel. He also defined his own moral code by deciding he wanted evil to be his good. Contrastingly, Adam and Eve were
The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is elevated in the area of rich text by its use of allusions, specifically to Paradise Lost. The most predominate is the story in Paradise Lost the original creation story that takes place in Genesis of the Bible. In the Romantic era, biblical and religious references were commonly used in literary work. It is common in the Romantic-Gothic genre. Mary Shelley uses these biblical allusions because she wants to show the principles of what it is to be human, and they are relevant to how she wants the audience to perceive God and the creation of life, which might feed into her stance on people “playing God” which she shows in the book, that she does not believe it is a wise decision to mess with the natural order.
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, contains and signifies many import Romantic elements throughout the entirety of the novel. Shelley incorporated many gothic and dark romantic elements into her story, but the heart of the novel is pure and true Romanticism. Almost all Romantic novel must haves are presented in the novel, and are attached to the writing so carefully that Frankenstein has earned its stay in the Romantic genre. Among these Romantic principles are the use of nature as a beautiful and powerful force, the Romantic ideal of creating something from nothing, and the Romantic reverence for the bittersweet cycle of life and death. the most associated theme with Romantic works is the power and beauty of nature.
In the film “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” directed by Kenneth Branagh was based on the book “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley. Victor, the main protagonist, is against the adversary monster he has created. The movie as I consider should earn a “D-” for there was excessive flaws upon the based of the novel, however, few key points was correctly shown that would flow the movie. The book portrays Victor Frankenstein as he was the only one working to the creation of the monster with no other acknowledgement of creating the monster, however, in the movie Professor Waldman have had Victor motivated upon the discovery of his(Waldman) works in which the works have helped him create the monster.
Frankenstein saw himself as a creator of man, as God. That idea went against beliefs stating that there is only one God and soon brought misfortunes to Frankenstein. Another conflict emerged through the thoughts of Frankenstein's creature. During his journey to understanding the world, the creature comes across books. Paradise Lost was one of the books, and the creature compared himself to Adam and Satan while his creator was God.
Within John Milton’s books “Paradise Lost” he creates Satan as the greater character over God. One who works through the individuals to create havoc. Satan is able to skew the minds of man to do what he wants with that individual and to counteract the word of God. A well known example was then Satan manipulated Eve to eat from the fruit of knowledge of Good and Evil. Though some critics may say that within Eve was Satan’s ultimate defeat others may say Satan’s evil soul is embedded in Adam and Eve, soon enough they are kicked from the palace of lush gardens, and everlasting life.
Through her work, Frankenstein, Shelley relays her struggles in life and this is evident in how she portrays the monster. At the beginning of the novel her life parallels more with the doctor,Victor Frankenstein, but once the monster is created and we see how the public reacts to him we see that Mary is more closely related to it than Victor. Frankenstein has many elements that are similar to Shelley’s life, his quest for love, desperation for acceptance, and depression. Shelley was born on August 30, 1797 in London, England. Born Mary Wollstoncraft Godwin, she was the daughter of philosopher William Godwin.
she was arguably influenced from his epic poem, “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.” (1812-1818) Additionally, Shelly was greatly influenced by John Milton’s, “Paradise Lost,” (1667) as evidenced by the correlations between Satan and Frankenstein’s monster. Both characters exhibit traits of having an alluring and attractive nature while simultaneously being frightening and a danger to society. Victor Frankenstein longed to reanimate a living being and in his efforts to do so, he created a monster that will prove Doctor Frankenstein is just as monstrous.
Horror, death and dramatic plots all combined to create Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which generated the standards for every Science Fiction book ever written. Mary Shelley’s style of writing remained particularly unique, considering the narration rotated between the main characters. All the characters had a special dramatic quality, which separated them from a typical group, and gave them a specific personality. Mary Shelley incorporated elements of weather, and gave its relation to themes of internal and external conflicts. Frankenstein elements are distinctive and show originality, whether it be the characters, setting, narration or conflicts.
Throughout Frankenstein, Shelley uses Victor to warn the reader of the dangers of aspiring to godliness, and the consequences one faces in the aftermath doing so, even going as far as to compare Victor to Satan, tempting the crew of Walton’s ship, in the book’s final pages. The Victor Shelley creates is very similar to the Satan created by Milton in his book, Paradise Lost, which explores the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. In Frankenstein, Victor speaks of his desire to create the Creature, saying, “I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow-creatures.” (152). Shelley’s diction choices, such as the word “useless” exemplify Victor’s excessive hubris, portraying him as a man who creates his Creature for, in his mind, the good of society.
Brandon McCormick Ms. Headley English 2013 8 December 2014 Allusions to Paradise Lost in Frankenstein In the nineteenth century gothic novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses numerous allusions within her novel that can easily be interpreted by the reader. These allusions make it easier for readers to understand the characters and compare their circumstances throughout the story. The most significant and most used was from John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. It is known that, “…Paradise Lost stands alone in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries atop the literary hierarchy, and Milton’s epic is clearly rooted in the history of Puritanism and in the bourgeois ideal of the individual, the ‘concept of the person as a relatively autonomous self-contained
By the development of the genre , the gothic villain appears as the main character in a gothic story . The gothic hero – villain characteristics often embody three main types as their model : Milton’s Satan, a rebellious compelling figure derived from Milton’s “Paradise Lost”; or Prometheus ,a mythological character who exceeded his limit by stealing fire from Zeus, the father of gods in Greek mythology, and offers it to mankind ; or Byronic hero, a complex moody, cynical, character derived from the famous English romantic poet Lord Byron, marked by his rejection of traditional values with noticeable intelligence, cunning, intense feeling of passion and strong sensual desires .
1. Paradise Lost was written by John Milton and first published in 1667, and has influenced poetry and literature in many ways since then. In fact many of the authors and works that we have read in this class were influenced by Paradise Lost. I think the biggest influence that I have seen was the use of opposition. I’m sure that this was not something the Milton started but he was a master at using the imagery of light and dark to compare good and evil, God and Satan, as well as Heaven and Hell.
During the Romantic era, Mary Shelley wrote one of her famous book called Frankenstein, which became respected literature of Romantic era. Even though Frankenstein was created mainly to emphasize horror, it rather developed different point of views; it captured many audiences who sought for ideas of science and nature. Throughout the story, Mary Shelley mingled science, human emotions, and nature in order to create supernatural tale that can be understood despite specks of illogical ideas. To make the story as much as smooth as possible without any disbeliefs, Mary Shelley incorporated science and morality in order to enhance her story to be easily absorbed and felt.
Although John Milton’s Paradise Lost remains to be a celebrated piece recounting the spiritual, moral, and cosmological origin of man’s existence, the imagery that Milton places within the novel remains heavily overlooked. The imagery, although initially difficult to recognize, embodies the plight and odyssey of Satan and the general essence of the novel, as the imagery unravels the consequences of temptation that the human soul faces in the descent from heaven into the secular realms. Though various forms of imagery exist within the piece, the contrast between light and dark imagery portrays this viewpoint accurately, but its interplay and intermingling with other imagery, specifically the contrasting imagery of height and depth as well as cold and warmth, remain to be strong points
Paradise Lost is the creative epic poem and the passionate expression of Milton’s religious and political vision, the culmination of his young literary ambition as a 17th century English poet. Milton inherited from his English predecessors a sense of moral function of poetry and an obligation to move human beings to virtue and reason. Values expressed by Sir Philip Sidney, Spencer and Jonson. Milton believes that a true poet ought to produce a best and powerful poem in order to convince his readers to adopt a scheme of life and to instruct them in a highly pleasant and delightful style. If Milton embraced the moral function of literature introduced by Sidney, Spencer and Johnson, he gave it a more religious emphasise.