In multiple parts, the creature is shown mistreatment by humans after he performs good deeds. For example, he saved a little girl “and dragged her to shore… the man saw [him] draw near, he aimed a gun, which he carried, at [his] body and fired,” (Shelley 61). The creature had done a good deed, out of the kindness of his heart and the actions taken by the old man had once again, shown the creature that he would never be accepted in society due to his figure and how terrifying he appears. Once again, the behavior of mankind led the creature to his only option left, revenge. The creature says, “I only wonder that at that moment, instead of venting my sensations in exclamations and agony… I left the spot where I had committed the murder,” (Shelley 62). After seeing the portrait of the woman, the creature’s rage returned after seeing how beautiful she was and remembering that he did not appear to look the same. His revenge overcame him in wanting to find Victor; he left William dead after hearing that he was related to Frankenstein. However, revenge came upon Victor after having to live through the guilt of the deaths of William, Justine, Elizabeth and his father. Revenge had consumed Victor after the troubles he had experienced caused by the creature. Frankenstein devotes the rest of his life to find and destroy the creature for all he has caused, leaving Geneva and all the pain behind,
Society today is greatly affected by science. Cell phones, computers, and social media are just some of the many facets of technology that we use in our everyday lives. To most people, this technology is wonderful, but Mary Shelley provides us with a caveat. In her novel Frankenstein, science and the pursuit of knowledge are recurrent themes. The novel starts off with Walden trying to make a discovery in the North Pole, and follows with a story about how Victor Frankenstein deals with his creation. The main message in the novel is that any scientist who discovers something has a responsibility to closely monitor the discovery, because it is very easy for the discovery to be corrupted. Victor Frankenstein evolves throughout the novel in three
He initiates the hostile relationship, threatening the creation, “We are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight in which one must fall” (103). Just as Victor abandons the creation from the day he creates him, Victor demands for the creation to leave him. Victor’s first instinct is to escape, avoiding his creature, and the responsibility he has to him as the creator. He rejects love in the relationship, while the creation seeks it from his estranged author. Victor manifests hatred onto the embryonic creation, assuming the creature is programmed with evil nature. Instead, the creature, who desires affection, consumes his aversion and mirrors it. As Victor’s resentment becomes clear for the creation, he too forms animosity, forcing Victor to promise him happiness in the form of a female counterpart. Victor undertakes the promise, but reneges on it. He “destroy[s] the creature on whose future existence [the creation] depend[s] for happiness” and watches the creation, “with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdr[a]w.” (171). Victor describes the creation as “devilish”, but the “devilish” nature is a direct result of Victor’s actions. He agrees to deliver happiness, but accomplishes the opposite. Victor knows
When exploring the dichotomy of the Creature versus Victor Frankenstein, one of the biggest and most widely debated questions remains whether Victor should be blamed for the Creature’s destructive actions or if the Creature should be considered guilty for his actions based off of his own free will. Many consider Victor Frankenstein the villain of the story due to his repetitive decisions to abandon and avoid his own “mistake,” the irresponsible choice of creating the monster in the first place, and his obvious negligence of the Creature’s feelings. Not even hours after the Creature comes to life, Victor feels “mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were
His appearance scares the people he encounters, and his only desire is love. Further in the novel, there are many situations where the Monster is the victim. Shelley uses words that provide imagery for her readers. Readers will think Victor is the antagonist. He realizes if he would show the Creature love, the Monster would not kill the people. Love seems to be all he seeks, but he gets his feelings hurt when people reject and talk about him. The Monster should have to go through the bad experiences, if people would treat him with respect and and not judge him. Love and attention are the key factors that all children should experience from their parents. The Monster did not experience the love and that is what led him to being the victim in
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.
Due to neglect and immediate abandonment during the beginning of his life, the creature develops a hostile attitude and seeks revenge on Victor Frankenstein. In response to the cottage dwellers attacking him, the creature exclaims “cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence of which you had so wantonly bestowed” and reveals his feelings “of rage and revenge” (Shelley 135). Because the creature only experiences negative encounters with society, he becomes aware of his societal status as an
Victor creates the Creature with the ideals of making it a paragon as he states, “[...] I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath” (60), however, he was in a state of semblance believing his creation was preeminent. Victor selfishly creates the Creature to gain prestige, pretentiously claiming himself as a human god when he succeeds and saying it was for the sake of humanity. In reality, he creates a grotesque being and abandons it the moment his illusions shatter, making the creature a victim because he denies the responsibility of raising it causing hardships for it. Victor also believes the creature is a reprobative individual since it kills his brother and foists Justine’s execution, thus he acts inimical towards it throughout the whole novel as he invectively exclaims, “Abhorred monster! Fiend that thou art! The tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes” (93). He is fully aware he the root of all problems, yet he believes the Creature to be censurable and denying to give it a chance of salvation when he breaks his promise and destroys the female creature he was working on; his actions result in his father and Elizabeth’s deaths. This also makes the
In the beginning, Victor reveals his timidity towards occurring disasters. When the creature comes to life, Victor realizes that it is grotesque and describes, “I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep” (42). Upon realizing the unfortunate turnout of the creation, Victor avoids confronting his fault by hurrying off and hiding in his bedroom. Accordingly, Victor is unable to control his creation. When the creature leaves after threatening Victor about a tragedy on his wedding night, Victor asks himself, “Why had I not followed him and closed with him in mortal strife?” 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
What’s a man without his family? The most influential factor in anyone’s young life is their family, but all families are not created equal. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley provides an interesting commentary on how families should raise their children. This text compares two families with drastically different parenting styles. Throughout the text Mary Shelly suggests that a structured “formal” education is corruptive, while a more natural education is favorable.
In Shelly’s text, the Frankenstein’s abandonment of his creation causes him to revert to monstrosity. The monster himself laments this stating that his “feelings of affection…were requited by detestation and scorn” from Victor, which prompts him to seek “revenge” against him by murdering his friends and family (140). Because these acts stem from Frankenstein’s abandonment of his monster, the blame for all subsequent evils falls squarely to Victor Frankenstein. However, in the film, the monster is not made evil by abandonment so much as the accidental placement of a “criminal” brain in the creature as opposed to a “natural” one, a mistake made by Frankenstein’s bumbling assistant. By placing the blame for his monstrosity on innate, accidentally created qualities of the monster, the film absolves the blame for evil from Frankenstein. By removing blame from Frankenstein, the film negates a core theme of the book: the need to face the consequences of one’s actions. Subsequently, the film looses this level of moral depth. The consequences of Victor’s actions are further negated by the omission of the creature’s murders of William, Justine, and Elizabeth, all of which are the monster’s responses to Victor’s abandonment. Each of these actions has a profound emotional effect on Victor and his family in the novel,
Both characters seem to strongly despise one another yet they both also despise themselves for their wrong and disastrous actions. The vivid similarities between these characters is driven by their isolation from paternal figures and society. In pursuit of his scientific studies, Victor admits that he “seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit" (Shelley 38). Not only are the two characters both subjugated from society through their own personal choice, but they also share interest in the mysteries of the natural world. They both admire nature for its serenity and beauty. 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. On the other hand, the Monster becomes obsessed with humans.
The monsters revenge on Frankenstein, drives him too to be full of hatred and need for vengeance because he destroyed everything good in his life. He feels as the death of his loved ones is his fault because he is the one that created the horrid creature in the first place (Brackett). “As time passed away I became more calm; misery had her dwelling in my heart, but I no longer talked in the same incoherent manner of my own crimes; sufficient for me was the consciousness of them” (Shelley 158). The monster wanted Victor to feel the same thing as him, lonely and sadness. The monsters revenge works, Victor becomes rejected by people and has nobody but himself. He starts his own plan to for revenge against the creature, but this makes him just as beastly as the monster. Victor makes it his life goal, to make the monster pay in any way he can. He wants him to feel lonely and isolated forever. The beast takes a lot out on Victor and makes him feel exactly the way he feels
The conflict between Victor and his creature is outlined in Frankenstein through the monster’s attempt to hurt Victor through the killing of William and Victor’s destruction of the creature’s future mate, representing how revenge often cultivates a normalization of immorality. Before William’s murder, the monster had been rejected by the DeLaceys and shot at for saving a young girl from drowning. As a result, the creature’s wish for revenge upon all