The Influence Of Nature Vs. Nurture In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

This much is true for Victor’s failure to take responsibility for not only teaching his creation about life but also failure to take responsibility for the actions of his creation. “Frankenstein! You belong then to my enemy… you shall be my first victim” (153). Victor’s knows that he is responsible for the death of William because he abandoned his creation and made the monster learn the hard way that he would not be accepted into society. But he has no choice but to let Justine take the fall for the death of his brother because he fears being seen as a madman.

The only resolution is to get alienated for seeking love from nature and dignity. Victor himself suffers alienation and isolation as his creation, then to be cruel as him. His evil and secret discoveries leads him remain far from his community. This isolation proves inner pain

Passion and Destruction As W. Somerset Maugham once said, “Passion doesn’t count the cost...Passion is destructive.” In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein leaves Geneva, his home town in the pursuit of knowledge, ding so he created a creature. Frankenstein gets frightened after the created the creature, so he leaves the creature in fear, only when he returns the creature is no longer there. The creature goes off on his own and get revenge on Victor by murder the people he is close to. Victor wants the creature dead and the creature wants Victor dead, in the end they both get what they wanted. The theme that passion can be destructive is shown through the creature, Victor's self destruction, and Victor and the creature’s passion to get revenge on each other.

“Feel very sad, down, empty, or hopeless have very little energy have decreased activity levels.”(NIMH). Victor felt rage, “Villain! Before you sign my death-warrant, be sure that you are safe.”(Shelley 158). Victor felt this way because his creation killed his brother and put the blame on his other loved one. The other thought Victor had about suicide was, “In that hour I should die and at once satisfy and extinguish his malice.”(Shelley 158).

And who is it who in fact enjoyed his solitude and seclusion from society? That would be none other than Victor Frankenstein himself. The disturbing reality that Victor is part god and part wild beast for his cruel actions towards his creation displays the evil that comes from a man when he removes himself from society. The Monster partially experiences these effects as well from his unwelcome seclusion from society when he is also slowly pulled back and forth between good and evil. Mary Shelley made no mistake in making this clear through her writing, however.

“‘Shall each man,’ cried he, ‘find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn,’” (Shelley, 20.11). Victor denies the monster humanity because he is appalled by his features, and that’s what makes Victor the true monster. He made early judgement on who the monster was before the monster could speak because he was terrifying, and society had made him believe that if it were different it was dangerous. Even when the monster promised to leave society forever if he were only given someone to love, to feel normal, the idea that anything outside their realm of societal norms being allowed to continue existing was just too much for Victor.

Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge” (“Frankenstein”). After the creature is abandoned by Victor, and then mistreated by the De Lacey family, he turns to malevolence. However, in taking revenge, the creature ensures that he will never be accepted by society.

Ambition as propelling it is, however can lead to the demise of the person influenced by it. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, informs the reader of the consequences of ambition, by telling a story of man named Victor Frankenstein who is overwhelmed by his ambition to see the atrocities he commits. In his ignorance created a monster who served to be Victor’s mistake as he slaughtered his family members. The novel illustrates the dangers of ambition because it is the main reason of Victor’s downfall. Pursuing a desire too strongly as to cause obsession is what destroyed Victor.

"Believe me, Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone?" (M. Shelly 114). Therefore the daemon's nature must be loving and compassionate, but because he experienced a lack of nurturing, that he was expecting to receive from his creator, Frankenstein, this then caused the daemon to be monstrous and seek revenge upon his creator; therefore Frankenstein's pain was a result of his own failures. The character of Frankenstein argues that both nature and nurture influences the behavior of people through his actions against his very own monster and in turn the effect of those actions on himself. Frankenstein left the monster alone, and the monster reacted for seeking that Frankenstein should feel just as much loneliness and woe and he did by killing off his entire family.

It is also pivotal to remember that he did not just lose his family, but by creating such a monster he loses his place amongst humanity as he says “I had no right to share their intercourse. I had unchained an enemy among them, whose joy it was to shed blood, and to revel in their groans” (pg. 188). Frankenstein creates the murderer of

The first, and possibly worst case of this is a result of the creation’s unnatural appearance. We are all aware of the amount of pressure society puts on us to look a certain way, and it is so much worse for the creation, seeing as he was not made in the same way we were. Mr. Frankenstein did not consider how the creation’s life would be affected by his unsightly appearance. Mr. Frankenstein caused the creation an immense amount of distress by removing any chance of the creation gaining acceptance into the human society. This caused even more distress once the creation discovered his appearance.

The monster declares that he desires “creatures…cheering my gloom”; however, no “Eve soothed my sorrows” (118, Shelley). Because of this abandonment, the monster “cursed [Frankenstein]” (118, Shelley). No mother or Eve is present to nurture the monster. Therefore, he faults his creator for his isolation and plans to seek vengeance against Frankenstein, sending a message to the reader concerning the violent repercussions from an absence of nurture. Similarly, after the De Laceys beat the monster, he feels there are “none…men that existed who would pity or assist” him, causing him to “declare everlasting war against the species” (122, Shelley).