Have you ever read a story that causes chills or your emotionally invested in a character. The story’s Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The mysteries of udolpho by Ann Radcliffe are literature that are centered in fear. These story’s cause suspense or has ghost or some type of monster. A gothic is a great example of fear in literature. The settings, characters, and story line has a way of making the reader invested by hooking to their emotions. Literature can be put into categories but it does not mean that all stories are the same.
Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, shows how a character who is portrayed as a tragic hero, in the beginning, can become the monster in the end. Victor and the Monster in Mary Shelley’s captivating novel showed how rival enemies share striking similarities. The similarities between the two tragic characters are driven by their dreary isolation from the secluded world. A large difference is that they were both raised in two completely different environments but understood the meaning of isolation. Physical differences are more noticeable rather than their personalities. At first, Victor is horrified by his creation but eventually becomes more and more like it. With a desire to destroy each other both are left alone to come up with a plan of revenge since they took each other's most prized possessions.
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein many symbols are represented throughout the book. One of those symbols is light. Light stands for life. Also, light functions in Frankenstein through knowledge, discovery, and enlightenment which are parts of life.The symbolization of light connects the story of Prometheus, a Greek god. Prometheus gave the human race the gift of light because of this he was punished. This symbolization contributes to the work as a whole through a message in the book, light of science is good until it is pursued too far. In the story of Prometheus consequences are suffered. Likewise, characters in Frankenstein suffer repercussions for their actions. In other words, the light of science in Frankenstein is creation. Furthermore, Victor Frankenstein pursued his scientific abilities too far and suffered the consequences of life.
Throughout Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the reader is torn between the forces of good and evil, as well as which characters represent which force. Perhaps the most masterful element of this novel is conveying how an individual can not be judged as wholly good or evil, and how having elements of both traits greatly forms the human experience. By using the motifs of light and dark to represent the positives and negatives of humanity, Mary Shelley is able to effectively convey character traits, depict transitions of good and evil within characters, and employ haunting symbolism and imagery into the novel and transform it into a literary masterpiece.
In the novel, Frankenstein by Mary W. Shelly, Victor Frankenstein creates a creature. The creature and Victor Frankenstein have conflicts between each other, which is why Robert Walton is necessary to help the reader relate to Frankenstein, by having many of the same attributes are Victor Frankenstein does.
Victor has created a monster, an “abhorred devil” who torments him throughout Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Indeed, the creature commits several horrid acts, which drives Frankenstein to pursue him into the Arctic. Yet the creature does not inspire the same fear or revulsion in the reader; instead he gathers sympathy. While Frankenstein may beg to differ, the reader connects with the monster because he is isolated from the world and surprisingly has a gentle heart.
When Victor grows up and learns about his passion, he describes science’s effect on him, “...like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys” (Shelley 20). Imagery describes a river, which is “swelling”, and able to “sweep” things away. These words provoke feelings of disruption and that nature is a great power able to control how life progresses. Here Frankenstein starts to develop ideas of what science can be used for and nature warns him that when he continues with his new found passion, all other positive things in his life will be compromised. The setting is described just moments prior to Frankenstein’s monster coming to life; “It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes…” (Shelley 35). The gloomy rain is portrayed through words such as “pattered” which creates a heavy, and depressing mood. The degrading weather provides insight for what will happen after the monster is created and the natural world is artificially changed. The monster pleas Frankenstein for a companion which he complies with at first, but later changes his mind. When Victor decides against the unnatural act he disposes of the unused body parts in
It is not the arrival that matters, but the journey. The experience that is gained from journeys may come to change and mold characters, changing the decisions that may come in the future. Frankenstein has multiple events of travel and journeys that shape the main protagonist and several other characters, as well. In the novel, Shelley uses the physical journeys of Walton and Victor in order to highlight different ambitions, morality, and the overall warning of self destruction within the novel as a whole.
In your opinion, who is the hero of Frankenstein: Victor Frankenstein or the monster? Why? How did Mary Shelley influence your choice (you may discuss the ways she reveals her characters)?
In Frankenstein, on Victor’s way home after being away for six years, a key moment in the novel that weather sets the mood is when “It echoed from Saleve, the Juras, and the Alps of Savoy; vivid flashes of light dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake making it appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an instant, everything seemed of pitchy darkness, until the eye recovered from the preceding flash” (Shelley 50). The author, Shelley uses weather to describe the murder of his young brother, William. The weather conditions effect Victor’s mood and convey his emotional feelings of Victor as being scared, sad, or depressed. The imagery in the quote relates to the thunder thus a way to broadcast the murder of his younger brother across the land and
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a gothic novel that tells the story of scientist, Victor Frankenstein, and his obsession with creating human life. This leads him to creating a gruesome monster made of body-parts stolen from grave yards, whom upon discovering his hideousness, the monster seeks revenge against his creator, causing Victor to regret the creation of his monster for the rest of his life. Shelley uses the literary elements of personification, imagery, and similes to give a vivid sense and visualization of Victor Frankenstein’s thoughts and feelings as well as to allow us to delve deeper into the monster’s actions and emotions.
Choose a complex and important character in a novel or a play of recognized literary merit who might on the basis of the character’s actions alone be considered evil or immoral. In a well-organized essay, explain both how and why the full presentation of the character in the work makes us react more sympathetically than we otherwise might. Avoid plot summary.
In the novel “Frankenstein”, written by Mary Shelley in 1818, illustrates the human nature in which consists of ambition versus responsibility as well as innocent versus evil. At the beginning of the story, Captain Robert Walton is introduced as the first character by narrating in the series of letters that he writes to his sister, Margaret Saville. Walton functions as a foil character for Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist and main narrator. By contrasting and highlighting Victor’s characteristics in the book, they have similarities in the desire of acknowledgment in achievement, loneliness, and differences in the realization of life.
How does Mary Shelley’s construction of the secondary characters reflect upon the protagonist? Throughout Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, character parallels and analogies between Victor Frankenstein and the creature are strongly emphasized. More evidently, the character doubles between the creator, Victor, and his creature are presented through their demeanor, their desires, and their demands. Shelley emphasizes parallelisms of nature, alienation and vengeance to underscore their similarities, leading some readers to interpret Victor and his creature being so similar that indeed, they are the same person. Both lonely and outcasts in the world, Victor and his creation live forlorn and dreary lives, hungry for the love of another, desperate for
An eye for an eye or the law of retaliation is the principle most people live their lives by. As Gandhi once stated, “an eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind” (Gandhi). For the characters in Frankenstein, this concept is apparent as the main character, Victor, creates a monster and instantly abandons him which sets off the chain of events revolving around revenge. Throughout the novel, the creature and Victor engage in a recurring cycle of vengeance, but these acts of revenge are bittersweet as in the end it destroys both of them. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley reveals how revenge consumes and destroys those who surrender to it.