Knowledge Is Power In Frankenstein Essay

Oftentimes people are too afraid of what people might think to show their full potential. This is not the case for Victor in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. In Frankenstein we see the journey of Victor and his creation as they separately get rejected and misunderstood by society. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein supports Emerson’s ideas of self-reliance because Victor shows that fearless people can achieve greatness.

Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein wrote the novel as an attempt to be involved into a group ghost story writing competition what she did not know was the effects it would have on literature for the rest of time. The story Frankenstein is about a young man named Victor Frankenstein who is obsessed with discovering something that has never been seen or done. In seeing a tree being stricken by lightning he gets the idea to create life out of dead skins and body parts of the dead to create this being. What he did not know was going to occur was that this monster would be the death of him. Mary Shelley uses the idea of progress which is the consequences or effects of a person or a thing in another one’s doing. Throughout the book Mary Shelley

Due to his emotional confinement, Victor feels that he cannot trust even his wife with the knowledge of the horrible creature in which he has created. This sense of being an

Knowledge can be Blessings and Curse A teenage girl Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein in the 18th century. A Gothic novel Frankenstein deals with two genres, Gothicism and science fiction. Victor, one of Mary Shelly’s characters represents man’s pursuit of knowledge which ultimately leads towards the path of destruction while another character Robert Walton implemented his knowledge wisely to get benefits for the society. Mary is indicating to the society that mankind has to pay full attention to science and scientific innovations in order to avoid the catastrophic events due to misuse of knowledge.

The death of his mother leads Victor into denial. As a result of his mother 's death, Victor’s emotions falsely lead him to believe that he could have some control over the fate of peoples lives. Thus, Victor’s beliefs soon equated to a set of rules that he himself must follow. Consequently,

“If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us” Adlai E. Stevenson. The politician explains his perception of creativity in this quote along with its connection to ambition by relating determination and faith to the discovery of knowledge. He believes that nothing can restrict our drive to seek information when one entirely devotes himself to the pursuit. Similarly, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, Robert Walton, and the creature all attempt to acquire arcane knowledge at any and all costs. Their ambition drives them to take risks and even put the lives of themselves and others on the line. Throughout the novel, these characters toil with the pursuit of forbidden knowledge by suffering through the ramifications of their decisions to satisfy their desires. The author implies that blind ambition can lead to the downfall of beings who don’t limit their curiosity. These endeavors include determining the secret of life as well as its creation, discovering a passage in the North Pole, and learning to understand one’s place in the world.

Victor realizes that he has lost control of the monster’s actions and regrets not taking the proper precautions in seizing the monster when he has the opportunity. Ultimately, Victor is victimized. After the murder of Elizabeth, Victor reflects on the deaths of his loved ones and says, “The death of William, the execution of Justine, the murder of Clerval, and lastly of my wife; even at that moment I knew not that my only remaining friends were safe from the malignity of the fiend” (174). Victor suffers watching his loved ones die one by one, yet lacking the ability to save them. Overall, Victor’s victimization is due to his timorousness dealing with his initial

Power, the one thing everybody desires, plays a major role in the lives of the characters of Frankenstein. Throughout the story, Shelley frequently emphasizes the theme of power and the constant struggle that the characters face to gain power over themselves and others. The two main characters, Victor Frankenstein and The Creature, show the most struggle for power throughout the story, both internally and over each other. They look to gain power of knowledge, power of themselves and power over one another. This struggle for power creates a constantly shifting dynamic amongst characters.

The idea of knowledge in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley interprets knowledge as an evil pursuit. The knowlege is misused, due to Victor, the monster, and the interference with nature. Theses reasons are different perspectives that lead to tragedies. The novel Frankenstein identifies Victor's desire to gain knowledge as misusing it.

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein brings his creation to life and has to endure the repercussions of his actions. While Victor is in fact human, the question of whether the creature or Victor is more human still stands. Humanity is demonstrated as compassionate in the book and monstrosity is the opposite. The creature is more human because of his developed personality and desire to be human. Victor, although born into a humane family, evolved into everything bad about humanity; he developed obsession, resentment, and manipulated life to conform to his idealities. Therefore, Victor is the real monster.

A Key Passage Analysis: The Ascent is Precipitous… This passage taken from Mary Shelley’s horror novel, Frankenstein, on page 66-67 describes the atmosphere and ponderings of Victor Frankenstein as he solitarily ascends to the summit of Montanvert. After feeling grievance and despair as he blames himself for the death of both his brother, William and his servant, Justine, Victor attempts to find solace in the majesty of nature to repair his emotional state. However, his descriptions of the environment are somewhat grim and bleak, contrasting the pleasant and peaceful mood that being in the natural world typically evokes.

Victor created a monstrous and deformed being that was feared and rejected by the society; this made the society to shun away from the creature leaving him all alone. Both the creature and his creator were outcasts and lived in isolation from the rest of the

Consequently, Victor creates a monster that later ruins his life and the lives of those around him in the story mostly due to his poor variety of decisions. These facts proves that Victor’s downfall is most likely caused by his failure of balancing his ego by allowing his Id and superego get to him. In the novel

For example, when the Monster was exposed to a peaceful natural setting he states: “my [the Monsters] spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the future glided by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy” (Shelley 101). Another common interest between these two seemingly contradicting characters is their strong love of knowledge. Although their love for knowledge is obvious, their inability to control their obsession with it often results in something negative. Victor becomes obsessed with science and studying life. His obsession leads to the creation of the Monster, his biggest mistake.

In 1818 Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, a novel that follows Victor Frankenstein, an ambitious man on his journey to defy the natural sciences. In Volume I of the novel, Victor discusses his childhood, mentioning how wonderful and amazing it was because of how his family sheltered him from the bad in the world. “The innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me” (35). When Victor brings up his childhood, he suggests that parents play a strong in how their kids turn out, either "to happiness or misery" (35). In particular the main character was sheltered as a child to achieve this “happiness” leading to Victor never developing a coping mechanism to the evil in the world. Throughout the novel, Victor does not have a healthy method of dealing with the negative scenarios that life throws at him. He does not deal with his problems directly, rather he runs away from them literally and figuratively. As a child Victor was sheltered from loss and his surroundings, which restrained his character from establishing a true coping mechanism for dealing with his problems, he is left to manage these happenings using the only form of survival that he knows-running away.