Personal Responsibility In Mary Shelley's Paradise Lost
Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein opens with an epigraph taken from Paradise Lost:
Did I request thee, Maker, from my day
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?—
(Paradise Lost, X. 743–5)
This profound statement raises the important question of personal responsibility for both the creator and the created. Victor Frankenstein, the ambitious protagonist of the gothic novel, is ardent with revealing the deepest, darkest mysteries of existence, and is lead by modern science and the occult to discover the methods to create life. By this dramatic discovery, Frankenstein is able to create an engineered man, a proclaimed monstrosity, whose miserable destiny perpetually connects with his creator’s. The novel chillingly dramatizes the dangerous potential of life begotten, and subsequently rejected upon a laboratory table, and shows
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From the very beginning of Frankenstein's creature’s existence, the creature expresses a resolute plea for Victor, his “father”, his “creator”, to accept parental responsibility for him. He questions his creator, “To whom could I apply with more fitness than to him who had given me life?” (Shelley ) The creature’s appeal is the most natural of appeals- for a father to accept his obligation to provide and care for his child. In doing so, the creature offers a paradigm of humanity, indicating each person’s innate set of duties and responsibilities present in their very being. However, Victor neglects the inherent duties as creator once he brings the creature to life. He spurns his creation out of instinctive repulsion, fleeing from the very being he gave life to. Frankenstein's flaw is not only that he recklessly plays with the sacredness of the life, a dominion belonging only to God, but that he fails to take responsibility for the consequences his own actions. He is blind to his error and
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1234 Words | 5 PagesMany ideas about the requirements of personhood have been circulating throughout Earth’s history. Many relate to religion and spirituality, and many of the others either contribute to the people v. property debate of the abolition movement or the contemporary pro-life v. pro-choice debates. This paper will address a few of these proposed requirements and how they specifically relate to the Monster created by Victor Frankenstein in the popular novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley in a secular and non-endorsing manner. This character will then be juxtaposed with a character of a separate work: Lucky from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.
Medical Advancement In Frankenstein
1269 Words | 6 PagesStraining for months in his laboratory, Victor Frankenstein set to achieve a single task: create human life from inanimate objects. He imagined a perfect being of “gigantic stature” (Shelley 32), who would better mankind; he sought for his new species to “bless [him] as its creator and source” (Shelley 32); he worked to “discover so astonishing a secret” (Shelley 31) of human life itself, unlocking the mystery of science. After years of ardently studying and preparing for his creation, Frankenstein finally brought the creature to life. Unfortunately, the monster he procured was unlike anything he could have predicted. The “beauty of his dream vanished” (Shelley 35) when the yellow-skinned, horrendous monster with dark, hollowed lineaments arose from the night to eventually destroy both Frankenstein’s sanity and family.
Biblical References And Allusions In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
767 Words | 4 PagesFrankenstein’s pursuit for knowledge causes his him to tirelessly work to create a living thing. But, this pursuit for knowledge is dangerous because man has his place in the world and should not try to go beyond it. By creating another living thing, he transcends the barriers of man and assumes a role similar to that of god. Frankenstein says that his work is “ Not befitting the human mind” (56). By creating another thing even though it is “not befitting the human mind”, Frankenstein is spurning his place in the universe.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: The Dangers Of Responsibility
974 Words | 4 PagesInitially, characters in Frankenstein not taking responsibility show the reader the potential dangers of pain and death in numerous situations in the novel. The reader of Frankenstein sees various examples of Shelley’s warnings of the dangers in not taking responsibility in the first couple chapters in the novel. Shelley first points out the dangers of not taking responsibility when Victor first creates the monster on a stormy November night when he was shocked with the “horror of that countenance [the monster]”(Shelley 44) before he vacated his home, abandoning his creation which fueled the monster with the hatred that he needed to punish his creator. Shelley’s Sliwowski 2 illumination of Victor and the monster as father and son, shows the importance of a parental
Maker's Responsibility In Frankenstein Essay
1014 Words | 5 PagesMary Wolstencraft Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein raises the question of a maker’s responsibility for their creation’s actions. While Frankenstein himself is responsible for the creation of his monster, the creation quickly develops a moral understanding of the world, yet chooses to ignore it. He picks and chooses his moments of violence with malice against those that he believes have wronged him. The creation is fully aware of his actions and their consequences on others and still chooses to ignore them and kill, harm, and torment people. The creation’s actions of cruelty are ones in which he is solely culpable because he became knowledgable about right and wrong before he committed his heinous crimes and then went on to cruelly harm humans,
Why Does Mary Shelley Use Of Personification In Frankenstein
656 Words | 3 PagesIn chapter four, Frankenstein describes his toil in creating human life. “...the moon gazed on my
What Is The Moral Of Frankenstein
1852 Words | 8 PagesWhen his mother was still alive, Frankenstein viewed his parents’ parental roles as responsibilities in a professional sense, rather than through unconditional love, which he continues to believe in later in life. He explains that “[he] was their plaything and their idol, and something better – their child, 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 [him]” (Shelley 35). By labelling parenting as “a duty” and describing himself as “the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by Heaven” (Shelley 35), Victor Frankenstein displays his accumulated knowledge on familial relationships – that parenting requires only responsibility rather than affection. Frankenstein is only familiar with love out of obligation , which “seems to take the place of a typical father of the 19th century who wanted a child to claim as a possession rather than a responsibility” (Harris 3).
Mary Godwin's Influence On Frankenstein
668 Words | 3 PagesMary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus reflects the Gothic attitude of God through allusions of both John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the ancient story of Prometheus. Mary Shelley’s ideology and paradigm were greatly shaped by her parentage. Born to Mary Wollstonecraft, an early feminist who died shortly after Mary’s birth, and William Godwin, a controversial political writer (Means 06), Mary would go on to be like her parents and become a prominent figure on the world’s literary stage. Godwin proved to be a major influence to Mary as she would dedicate her first edition of Frankenstein to him, much to the displeasure of more conservative readers (Means 06). Godwin’s novels “advocate intellectual self-development through the rule of reason, personal freedom bordering on political anarchy, the dismantling of inherited institutions, religious liberalism, and disinterested justice” (Curran 09).
Frankenstein: Selfish And Selfishness In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
1135 Words | 5 PagesVictor Frankenstein is selfish. The novel portrays Victor as a selfish character who is only concerned about his own well-being. Frankenstein wanted to manipulate the power of life. He abandons his creation because of the creature’s appearance and also withholds information or lies about his creation. Due to Victor 's selfishness, readers feel sorry for his creation.
Annotated Bibliography On Frankenstein
1439 Words | 6 PagesKyle Lyon Professor Ed Steck AWR 201 F3 14 April 2015 Annotated Bibliography Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Hunter, Paul J. Norton Critical Edition.
Examples Of Rationalization In Frankenstein
503 Words | 3 PagesIn the protection of his image of self, which is a direct result of a god complex, Victor Frankenstein rationalizes his arguably terrible choices to combat the guilt that stems from his involvement with William and Justine’s
Parent Child Relationship In Frankenstein
1465 Words | 6 PagesIn the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein's scientific mind helped him to create a living creature by sewing together and reanimating parts of previously dead human, But because of how the creature looked he rejected it when he succeeded at bringing it to life. The creature grew up without any parental affection or guidance. Growing up like this can cause major emotional complications later in life. Through the actions of murdering Victor’s family and loved ones the creature shows his desire for revenge against Victor for abandoning him. At the end of the book the creature has come face to face the death of his creator, instead of feeling rejoice for the death of the man he tortured and hunted down, he feels sorrow and
Who To Blame In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
542 Words | 3 PagesVictor Frankenstein turns away from his responsibilities by ignoring the existence of his creation. Throughout the novel, Victor is constantly running away from the monster and not giving him attention, which resulted in the monsters change of personalities. For example, in page 71 the creation said, “All men hate the wretched; how must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us.” This quote suggests that because of the ignorance of Victor the monster began to become evil and have the urge to seek
Father And Son Relationship In Frankenstein
1134 Words | 5 PagesThis 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.
Character Development In Frankenstein
1921 Words | 8 PagesSuch passion is seen in Victor’s ‘noble intent’ to design a being that could contribute to society, but he had overextended himself, falling under the spell of playing ‘God,’ further digging his grave as he is blinded by glory. His creation – aptly called monstrous being due to its stature, appearance, and strength – proved to be more of a pure and intellectually disposed ‘child’ that moves throughout the novel as a mere oddity, given the short end of the stick in relation to a lack of familial figures within his life, especially that of parents. Clearly, Victor Frankenstein had sealed his fate: by playing God he was losing his humanity, ultimately becoming the manifestation of Mary Shelley’s hidden desires, deteriorating into The Lucifer Principle by which the author Howard Bloom notes social groups, not individuals, as the primary “unit of selection” in human psychological
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