The Importance of Compassion in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Compassion helps us by connecting with other people. It creates trust and love between people, which can help form better relationships and connections. In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the theme of compassion plays an important role in forming the characters' relationships with each other. Shelly uses the reader's compassion for both the monster and Victor Frankenstein to engage in the plot and conflict. She presents stories and evokes the sense of empathy from the reader to the monster. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein shows compassion through Henry caring for Victor when he was feeling sad, Caroline adopting Elizabeth, a poor orphan, and Victor agreeing to make a creature for the
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Victor talking to Robert Walton about his parents’ thoughts of Elizabeth, “They were fond of the sweet orphan. Her presence had seemed a blessing to them, but it would be unfair to keep her in poverty and want, when the Providence afforded her such powerful protection..the result of that was that Elizabeth Lavenza became the inmate of my parents’ house…the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and my pleasures” (Shelley 17). This quote demonstrates the sympathy that Caroline feels for the poor, orphaned child. She can understand Elizabeh because she was also poor for a period of time until Victor’s father married her. Elizabeth was not treated any differently from Victor or anyone else in the family. Caroline shows empathy towards Elizabeth by taking her …show more content…
Yet even thus I loved them to adoration: and to save them, I resolved to dedicate myself to my most abhorred task” (Shelley 108) . Victor, as the creator, feels as if he is responsible for all the deaths the monster had caused. This also shows that Victor is willing to do anything for his family, even a task he finds intolerable. Victor Frankenstein experiences and indicates compassion for the
Early on, Elizabeth is confronted with the issue of a struggling marriage. She and her husband John find that their relationship is rather strained because Elizabeth
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a classic novel that explores the consequences of cruelty, both towards oneself and others. Through the course of the story, the theme of cruelty functions as a crucial motivator and major social and political factor, driving the plot and the development of the characters. This essay will analyze how cruelty functions in the work as a whole, the impact it has on the characters, and what it reveals about the perpetrator/victim relationship. One of the most striking examples of cruelty in the novel is the treatment of the creature by his creator, Victor Frankenstein.
Within the heart of Victor Frankenstein, there was an insatiable thirst for scientific fame. His quest for scientific greatness birthed a creature that yearned for connection, only to be met with a chilling void where compassion should have resided. As the novel unfolds, the absence of sympathy becomes a repeating theme. Although the creature was seen as a monster, Victor Frankenstein was the true monster that lacked sympathy for the creature, making Victor less sympathetic than the creature. This was evident when considering Victor was motivated by selfish ambition and pride to create life, Victor abandoned his creation out of disgust and fear, and Victor refused to acknowledge the creature's humanity.
Actions are motivated in the response others give them, how they are treated, or how they feel within themselves. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is full of gothic literature and elements that shape each character to fit the storyline. The book contains psychological references and the early 1800’s perceptions of insanity shown through the protagonist Victor Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein seems to enjoy living a life of misery and guilt. The grief he has from the death of his mother Caroline, is used to power the making of his creature, and experiment with his interest in birth and death.
George Washington once said, “happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected”. A person must be able to cope with their actions and decisions if they wish to live a meaningful, pleasant life with little to no regret. In Mary Shelley’s revolutionary gothic science fiction novel, Frankenstein, written during the height of the romantic era, the main character Victor Frankenstein does not fulfill his moral responsibility of caring for the creature he haphazardly and immorally bestows life upon, and is punished for it. Shelley uses scenes of Victor’s intentional selfish ignorance, hatred towards his monster, the subsequent effects on his creation and loved ones, and unfulfilling revenge to demonstrate the importance of facing one’s issues and
The central theme that Mary Shelley is trying to communicate in her novel Frankenstein is that love is what drives hatred. I know this because throughout the story Victor has much love for those dear to him, and when the monster kills them, he knows that he has to loathe the monster, his intense love for those close to him is what drove him to insanity and hatred. The monster knows what he is doing when he kills Victor's loved ones, he knows that getting into Victor's heart is what will set him off. The monster does this because of his love of life and hatred of Victor. When the monster first came to be he learned to love life and appreciate nature, but the fact that Victor made him so horrific is what drove the monster to kill Victor's family
The novel Frankenstein brings to light many problems and situations that shed light on the faults of mankind. Cruelty was a huge factor in the novel; throughout Frankenstein is cruel to his body and to his creation. When he first makes the creature he runs from it, leaving the creature to fend for himself; even when reuniting with the creature he continues displays cruelty. The creature, in turn exhibits Victor cruelty right back. Within Frankenstein cruelty can be attributed, often affecting both Victor and the creature; serving as a crucial motivator and revealing their anger, pain, frustration till eventually both die.
In life there are many evils that will try to defeat a person but the key to living a happy, fulfilling life is learning to have empathy for others who are facing their own evils. Empathy is hard to have if a person has not endured any real struggles in their life. Being able to know firsthand how it feels to go through difficulties helps create a level of empathy that leads to compassion for one another. Victor Frankenstein is a prime example of someone who has faced evils in their own life but in the end did not find compassion for others, instead he found his own hell. In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor’s lack of empathy opens the door into his world of selfishness, cruelty, and unhappiness.
The gothic fiction novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley centralizes on humanity and the qualifications that make someone human. The content of the novel Frankenstein depicts a monster displaying human traits that his creator Victor does not possess: empathy, a need for companionship, and a will to learn and fit in. Throughout the novel Shelley emphasizes empathy as a critical humanistic trait. The monster displays his ability to empathize with people even though they are strangers. On the other hand Victor, fails to show empathy throughout the novel even when it relates to his own family and friends.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein openly propounds the co-existence of good and evil that yields to inexorable carnage and unrelenting revenge. A maniacal devotion to reason makes Victor the true antagonist of the novel and therefore the real villain in Frankenstein. Victor’s ability to create a life out of lifeless matter unbounded the pious, circumscribed view of God as the creator. Nevertheless, this infringement of propriety leads Victor down a path of revenge, which ultimately sets forth his destruction. Lastly, Victor and the monster are two aspects of the same person.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein examines how the presence of a mother, negatively or positively, affects the development of a child. Victor’s mother, Caroline Frankenstein, dies while Victor is still a young man (he is about 17 years old), breaking their relationship between mother and son. Because Victor loses his bond with his mother, he is unable to act as a mother would when he creates his creature. Caroline Frankenstein’s absence in Victor’s life creates a disunion between the mother and child bond, which is evident in Victor’s creation and his fragmented relationship with the creature. Caroline Frankenstein, Victor’s mother, portrayed a traditional mother in the Frankenstein household, until her death.
Throughout her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley shows that she believes human connections play an important role in the development of a respectable society, by helping establish and expand social skills and a moral code, as well as causing humans to help eachother. She shows a variety of people and situations to prove her point. After loosing everything and having numerous obstacles to overcome the De Lacey’s are still among the kindest individuals in the book, since they have their connection to eachother. Victor and his family show how traits like generosity can be spread through human connection, and how a lack of human connections can lead people to make mistakes. Frankenstein’s Monster is used to portray the negative effects a lack of
In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, the audience views the monster as the most sympathetic character as Shelley utilizes a basic understanding of human nature in order to emphasize the innocence of the monster and force the reader into siding with the underdog. Additionally, Shelley furthers her position on why the monster is the most sympathetic by alluding to and referencing John Milton’s Paradise Lost as well as the relationship between God and man. Through this, Shelley forces the reader to abandon the conventional narrative that the monster is evil simply because he inflicted death upon others by looking at the motives that drove their actions. Shelley’s novel follows the life of Victor Franikenstein, an aspiring scientist who is fascinated
Duality is shown in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, a gothic tale of a scientist whom looks to advance the life-giving qualities of mother nature. Through this novel, Shelley proves that good and evil in human nature is not always simple to define, and that everyone has both of these qualities within them. The duality of human nature is shown through the characters of Victor Frankenstein and his monster, who are both heroes in the novel while simultaneously displaying anti-hero qualities. Shelley forces the reader to sympathize with them both but also creates gruesome ideas of the two. Frankenstein’s creature places himself in a submissive position when he begs his creator to have mercy on him and asking the creator to “create a female for [him] with whom [he] can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for [his] being.”
Perhaps the emphasis Shelly puts on the childhood emotions of the characters emphasizes the importance of that phase in a person's life. Victor explains near the end of the story: "From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition; but how am I sunk". By contrasting Victor's core tendencies and emotions against those of his family and friends, Shelly also emphasizes how they can control the character's fate. For instance, Elizabeth and Henry, the similar contrasts for Victor's personality, shared the same fatal ending at the hands of the monster that is the product of Victor's