Themes In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

“What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We all are formed by frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly- that is the first law of nature.” This quote by Voltaire evinces that humanity, other than possessing the ability to feel emotions, to have compassion, and to be able to feel pain, is being able to tolerate and look past one another’s flaws. Throughout Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, humanity was one of the main themes expressed in the novel. The concept of Romanticism also played an important role in Frankenstein, for its characteristics of interest in the common man, strong emotions, awe of nature, celebration of the individual, and the importance of imagination was distinguished throughout the numerous events. In this novel, humanity and Romanticism repeatedly crossed one another as Victor Frankenstein and his creation, the Monster, expressed their feelings and the decisions they made

Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein is a frame narrative of the life of Victor Frankenstein recorded by Robert Walton. It is circled around his creation of a monster that suffered a lonely life and wanted revenge for being created. In Frankenstein, Shelley portrays many big ideas but, one that continues to show importance is the idea of Human Needs and Desires. so, in the novel Mary Shelley presents the idea that all creatures have a basic need for friendship and love.

The monster wanders alone trying to make friends along the way, and everyone rejects him based on his looks. The monster has a wonderful personality, but no one takes the time to see that. New people shun him, thinking he wants to harm them.

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. Throughout the novel Shelley emphasizes empathy as a critical humanistic trait. The monster displays his ability to empathize with people even though they are strangers. On the other hand Victor, fails to show empathy throughout the novel even when it relates to his own family and friends.

No one even wanted to get close to him. The monster stole from the town’s people. He was constantly destroying their land and was always causing trouble. Everyone in town was afraid of him.

The fear felt for monsters and ultimately connected to desire. Jeffery Cohen has a clear opinion of this. “We distrust and loathe the monster at the same time we envy its freedom, and perhaps its sublime despair.” They are both terrifying and the heart of fantasies. This accounts for the monster’s popularity.

Every action the monster takes reflects back on Victor, the one who invented him and then abandoned him at birth. Victor realizes how “[he] loved [Henry] with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds, yet [he] could never persuade [himself] to confide in [Henry]” (Shelley 55). The monster Victor created is pushing him away from Henry since Victor left his creation feeling useless, just like an archetypal evil-doer would to anyone. Victor is keeping his monster a secret as well as everything he knows about “awakening the dead”. This doesn’t seem like the smartest thing to do especially when there are people who’re oblivious to the monster roaming the streets.

A good monster is never human or inhuman. Monsters serve as cautionary tales about the consequences of reckless abandon, and far more often than appearing as metaphysical beings, their true form is an idea. When children check under their beds and inside of their closets for a pair of yellow eyes and a toothy grin, they do not dispel any physical entity. Instead, they dispel the unknown. Similarly, in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein grapples not with a physical entity, but his own personality flaws.

Regardless of who we strive to be, or who we dare not to be, those who we respect and look up to will be the ones who leave an impression on our lives. To the Monster’s credit, it continued to pursue a life of good deeds until the people it idolized turn on it. Because of the influence made on it by its parental figures the Monster behaves like an outsider, and as an outsider it gains new role models and is governed by new emotions such as anger and hate. The monster should not be blamed for its malicious nature, rather, the people who taught it hate and the Doctor who created it without a true intent of being its

The fictional horror novel of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is driven by the accentuation of humanity’s flaws. Even at the very mention of her work an archetypal monster fills one’s imagination, coupled with visions of a crazed scientist to boot. Opening her novel with Robert Walton, the conduit of the story, he also serves as a character to parallel the protagonist’s in many ways. As the ‘protagonist’ of the story, Victor Frankenstein, takes on the mantle of the deluded scientist, his nameless creation becomes the embodiment of a truly abandoned child – one left to fend for itself against the harsh reality posed by society. On the other hand, Walton also serves as a foil to Victor – he is not compulsive enough to risk what would be almost

In Frankenstein, the monster lives in constant isolation. Anyone who the monster comes into contact with fears him. His own creator, Victor Frankenstein, runs aways in horror after creating the monster. The monster has nobody to interact with, so he asks Frankenstein

The monster is not respected despite his efforts and faces discrimination. Both creations were set up for failure by their creators and were not expected to be successful. They were utilized by their creators in an effort to achieve a new scientific breakthrough and prove their original hypothesis. Due to their inhumane origins they will never, despite any progress they make towards becoming more human, be considered human or successful creations by their

Frankenstein uses mysterious circumstances to have Victor Frankenstein create the creature. This is found in the raising of the dead and other aspects of the unknown unexplored fields of science. Frankenstein possesses an atmosphere of mystery and suspense pervaded by a threatening feeling enhanced by the unknown accompanying the monster. During the letters at the beginning of the novel, when describing the creature as “a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature” (9) it is not yet clear as to what Frankenstein is speaking of, unknowns like these are frequent throughout the book due to the concentric nature of the story, many questions are created based off of stories chronologically later than the rest of the book. Frankenstein has a way of making things sound overtly dramatic, “as if possessed of magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real intentions; and when I thought that I had prepared only my own death, I hastened that of a far dearer victim,” (175) while surely Frankenstein does not have magic powers the reader is left with a question as to who could possibly be a “far dearer victim” (175).

Once the creature begins to go out on his own and learn about life and society, during his first interaction with other people he learns that he will be immediately judged based on how he looks. To start, when Frankenstein first sees the creature, he quickly runs away without any interaction and exclaims “no mortal could support the horror of that countenance” (Shelley 36). This interaction made the monster realize that even his creator could not avoid the habits of the society he lived in, and immediately ran away from him in fear because he didn’t believe he was attractive. Then after that, the creature still has enough hope to go into a village and meet other people, but he is immediately met with children that “shrieked” and one woman who “fainted” just at the sight of him (Shelley 74). In every situation where the creature attempts to interact with others, he is shunned immediately, before even being able to say a word.

The unjust treatment that the creature received from humankind was harsh and unreasonable as he wasn’t allowed the opportunity to prove his intentions were far from malicious. His loneliness, isolation and injustice from those he tried to befriend turned him into an actual monster, evidently his perspective and personality changed after being excluded. The monster had been treated unfairly by humanity “I desired love and fellowship and I was spurned. Was there no injustice in this? … Am I to be thought the only criminal when all human kind sinned against me?”